









\ 


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THE POLLY PAGE 
CAMPING CLUB 


THE POLLY PAGE 
BOOKS 

The Polly Page Yacht Club 
The Polly Page Ranch Club 
The Polly Page Motor Club 
The Polly Page Camping Club 







Higher and Higher into the Thick Branches 



THE 

POLLY PAGE 
CAMPING CLUB 


BY 

IZOLA L. FORRESTER 

AUTHOR OF “THE POLLY PAGE YACHT CLUB,’ 
“THE GIRLS OF BONNIE CASTLE,” ETC. 



PHILADELPHIA 
GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO. 
PUBLISHERS 




Copyright , 1915, by 
George \V. Jacobs § Company 
Published May, 1915 


All rights reserved 
Printed in U. S. A. 



JUN 3 1915 


©CI.A401231 

U-o i 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Admiral’s Secret 7 

II A Guidepost of Fate 16 

III Kate’s Doctor Bob 27 

IV The Rocke of the Dawn 40 

V Wanted: a Grove 53 

VI In Takeshi’s Domain 65 

VII The Commissary Scout 77 

VIII Kate’s Kiddie Clinic 87 

IX Pippino’s Family . 99 

X The Lonely King 106 

XI A Clue from Italy 115 

XII The Last Calvert Powwow 123 

XIII Casa Neri Responds 137 

XIV Seeing New York 150 

XV Mapledene Farm 165 

XVI Pitching Camp 180 

XVII The Castle Domain 199 

XVIII Crullers Finds the Wander Rose . . . 216 

XIX The Hike to Baldy Knob 231 

XX Sarepta Entertains 245 

XXI Judy, Gypsy Princess 258 

XXII The Admiral Arrives 272 

XXIII Led by the Firelight 283 

XXIV Leaving the Gypsy Trail 293 



ILLUSTRATIONS 


Higher and higher into the thick branches . Frontispiece 

PACING 

PACK 

Her attention on the semi-circle of girls .... 46 


A slim, olive-skinned girl dancing in the street . .100 


Polly presided at the historic chafing dish . . . .130 
‘‘Pretty good fish running to-day,” he called . . . 202 






THE POLLY PAGE 
CAMPING CLUB 

CHAPTER I 

THE ADMIRAL’S SECRET 

At the top of the stairs Polly paused, button- 
ing her sweater, her head on one side like a medi- 
tative bird. There was some mystery in the air, 
and she couldn’t get even a hint of it. 

The Admiral had been unusually genial at 
luncheon, but several times Polly had caught him 
exchanging long knowing glances with Mrs. 
Langdon, whereupon Aunt Evelyn had started 
making what Lillie Anna would have called 
“surreptitious and cursory remarks.” 

It was something they were trying to keep a 
secret from her, of that much Polly felt certain. 
Even now she could hear them talking softly to- 
gether in the study, and nobody ever disturbed 


8 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


the Admiral’s afternoon nap there unless a seri- 
ous conference was necessary. 

“The blessed darlings,” thought Polly com- 
fortably. “They’re hatching something and are 
afraid that I’ll find them out.” She leaned over 
the polished balustrade and gave a warning cough 
just to let them know that she was coming down. 

Instantly there was silence in the study, guilty 
silence. Mrs. Langdon stepped into the lower 
hall as Polly came down. 

“I thought you had gone, Polly.” 

“ J ust going now. The train won’t be in until 
2.15. Did you or grandfather want me?” 

Better give them a chance to tell her, Polly 
thought magnanimously. She watched Mrs. 
Langdon as the latter bent over the white lilacs 
in their tall lavendar vase. It seemed that Aunt 
Evelyn made pictures in everything she did, she 
was so graceful. 

“You will meet the other girls at the station? ” 

“Some of them. Only the committee is al- 
lowed to be there to meet Kate. Don’t you want 
to come too, Auntie? ” 

“No, child, thank you. Bun along.” 

Polly went, as she told herself, philosophically. 
That was one element which she had acquired 


THE ADMIRAL’S SECRET 


9 


during her last year at Calvert Hall, philosophy. 
Nearly all of the seniors acquired it before spring, 
Sue Warner said, but it usually wore off by the 
end of May. This was only April, so Polly’s 
still clung to her and it made her very patient 
and considerate in her dealings with the Admiral 
and Aunt Evelyn. It appeared that no matter 
how tall you grew or how old you were, you 
never even approached the grown-up stage to 
those nearest and dearest to you. 

The railway station at Queen’s Ferry looked 
like a bungalow, it was so low and quaint, built 
of gray field stone with ivy covered walls and 
mullioned windows. It seemed to convey its 
own particular greeting to all travelers who were 
fortunate enough to leave the train here. On 
the circular patch of green grass a pattern of 
flowers, begonias, pansies and mignonette, in 
summer time spelled out the words “Queen’s 
Ferry.” Polly wished they said something per- 
sonal instead, like “Welcome Home.” They 
always seemed to say it to her whenever she went 
away on any jaunt and returned. 

Waiting today on the platform was the re- 
ception committee, appointed specially by the 
Senior Class of Calvert Hall to meet Kate 


10 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


Julian. It hardly seemed three years since Kate 
had been chaperon and “ship’s husband” of the 
merry yacht club at Lost Island. She had grad- 
uated that June, and had taken up her hospital 
training in New York the following fall. 

“Dear old Kate,” Sue bubbled over the instant 
she saw Polly. “The train’s almost due. I sup- 
pose we really should have a speech of welcome 
or something formal, shouldn’t we, Polly?” 

“Not for Kate. If it were Isabel here, we’d 
have a band and a flower twined carriage and a 
speech of welcome on parchment, wouldn’t we, 
Isabel?” 

“Maybe you will yet,” said Isabel happily, 
tucking her arm in Polly’s. The girls laughed, 
for she was still the same Lady Vanitas, always 
fond of ceremonials, or, as Crullers put it, “the 
pumps and vanities of this mortal life.” 

Pour members of the Senior Class, the four 
that Kate had known best, had been appointed 
as a committee of welcome — Polly Page, Isabel 
Lee, Sue Warner, and Ted Moore, for although 
she was growing up, no one but Miss Calvert ever 
called Edwina anything except “Ted.” Back in 
the old days when they had been Freshmen, Kate 
had been their favorite in the Senior class, and 


THE ADMIRAL’S SECRET 11 

had chaperoned them and mothered them gen- 
erally. 

“Guided our wayward footsteps and taught us 
how to tame a chafing dish,” Polly had said once. 

So now they waited to greet her on her first 
return to Queen’s Ferry since her marriage to 
Doctor Elliott. Besides the four class-mates, 
there was Ruth Brooks. There had been some 
argument over her admittance to the committee, 
since she had left Calvert the previous year, but 
Polly insisted that, even if you were unfortunate 
enough to leave before all the other members of 
the Vacation Club, that was no reason why you 
should not be an honorary member of the alumnae 
for life. 

Peggie and Natalie were disqualified for ad- 
mission and so were Hallie and “Crullers,” not 
through any special iron-clad rule of order, but 
because they represented the younger crowd. 
Two new members had been added to the Vaca- 
tion Club nearly every year to take the places of 
those who had gone the way of honorable Sen- 
iors. This last time the additions had been the 
Morris girls, Vera and Betty, whom Polly and 
her crew had met on the motor trip and Marjorie 
Lawrence. 


12 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“Don’t you begin to feel old, girls?” asked 
Isabel. “It seems years and years since we 
started school at Calvert.” 

“No, I don’t,” Polly returned flatly. “And 
I’m never going to let myself feel old, not when 
I’m ninety-two, and going around with a gold 
headed cane and a lace cap with a pink bow. I 
love pink. I do hope Kate will be just the same, 
and not have grown settled and dignified.” 

“She’ll have to be dignified if she’s a doctor’s 
wife,” Ruth declared. “And, besides, she had 
two years of training before she was married. 
Nurses are always rather settled in their ways. 
I suppose they get so used to having people mind 
them.” 

“Wasn’t it odd for her to marry the doctor 
who gave her her very first case?” Ted said. 
“The idea of studying for two years towards your 
heart’s desire, then switching off and just getting 
married.” 

“But that was Kate’s heart’s desire, Ted. 
Doctor Elliott had been on the house staff at the 
same hospital where she took her training. I 
forget which one it was now, but they got a lot 
of the poor cases there, and he had charge of the 
children’s clinic. Then after she had finished her 


THE ADMIRAL’S SECRET 13 


course, she went out as a visiting nurse from one 
of the settlement houses, and she met him in that 
work too. I know Kate keeps up her work even 
better now than she could have if she hadn’t mar- 
ried him for their tastes are similar, and their aims 
too. They’re both in Child Welfare work now 
in New York.” 

Ruth paused. It was a long speech for 
“Grandma” to make, and she flushed over it. 
Kate had corresponded with her ever since leav- 
ing Queen’s Ferry, and Ruth had envied her her 
chance to get in touch with actual conditions in 
the great centre of human life and endeavor. 
For Ruth, life had narrowed down to remaining 
at home with an invalid mother, and trying to 
fit her ambitions and longings to the measure of 
daily duties. 

“Oh, but it’s so wonderful, girls,” Isabel ex- 
claimed. “Real love is made up of sacrifice. 
Think if she had been like some girls, and had 
insisted on his giving up that work and going in 
for a good practice that would pay.” 

“I don’t think Kate would look on it as sacri- 
fice, though. They’re just pulling together in 
the work they both love,” said Sue. 

Polly nodded happily over at Sue, who always 


14 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


took an argument seriously. Polly hardly ever 
did. As she said, arguing made wrinkles and 
tied your brain up in knots, so what was the use ? 
If the other fellow wanted to think differently 
from the way you did, let him. Anyway, it 
added interest and diversion to the world to have 
varying opinions. 

“I wonder,” Sue added gloomily,” if some day 
Peggie and the other youngsters will be coming 
down here to welcome some of us home. I hate 
to leave school and start growing up.” 

“I don’t, do you, Polly? I think it’s glorious 
to go forth into life’s battle and feel one’s self 
expanding, and expanding — ” 

‘‘Isabel’s either planning to be a dirigible or 
one of those cannon balls that spreads itself all 
over creation,” Ted commented. “If there’s go- 
ing to be any expanding, the Club does it alto- 
gether. United we stand, expanded we blow 
up.” 

Polly had to laugh with the rest. Hands deep 
in her sweater pockets, she stood where she could 
watch the perspective of track leading north 
towards Washington. She was trying to think 
of two things at the same time, what the girls 
were saying and what it was the Admiral and 


THE ADMIRAL’S SECRET 15 


Aunt Evelyn could be planning. It was useless 
to imagine they were not in some secret together. 
Polly knew the signs. And Queen’s Ferry did 
not admit of much variety in the way of sur- 
prises. It could not be anything about Calvert 
Hall. The Easter Vacation of two weeks began 
on Monday. She had planned to devote that 
time to settling with the other girls all the plans 
for the summer vacation. 

Up the shore came the long whistle of the 
train bound south from Washington. Ted and 
Sue slid off the baggage truck they had been 
ornamenting, as the station agent came leisurely 
forward. 

“Plenty time, plenty time,” he told them. 
“Did you know the Admiral’s driving down along 
the road yonder, Miss Polly?” 

“Grandfather!” exclaimed Polly in surprise. 
“Oh, are you sure, Andy? He can’t be coming 
down to meet Kate or the Doctor, so it must be 
somebody else. I just knew he had a secret from 
me.” 

“Well, you’ll know it in a minute,” Ted said. 
“There she comes.” 


CHAPTER II 


A GUIDEPOST OF FATE 

The Admiral beamed smilingly as he stepped 
from the carriage and came down the platform 
towards the group of waiting girls. 

“I’m a reception committee all by myself,” he 
told them. Polly slipped her arm through his, 
and began to coax, but he was immovable this 
time. “No, matey. You let me alone, and just 
go ahead and welcome Kate and her Doctor boy.” 

“Please tell,” begged Polly. “It’s some one 
else who’s coming, isn’t it?” 

“There’s Kate!” called Sue, waving frantically 
at one of the car platforms, and dancing up and 
down until Ted’s hand gripped and held her 
steady. 

“Nice way for a Senior to be acting. Bow 
sedately, Susan, and mind j^ou keep your feet 
on the ground.” 

For the moment Polly deserted the Admiral 
and assembled her committee of welcome for the 


A GUIDEPOST OF FATE 


17 


returned wanderer. Kate’s face had brightened 
with happiness at sight of the old-time school- 
mates, and she stretched out both hands to them 
as the train drew to a standstill. Beside her was 
her husband, Doctor Elliott, and the girls ap- 
proved her choice at first glimpse of him. He 
was about twenty-six, rather short in stature and 
stockily built, with thickly curling blonde hair, 
and blue eyes that half closed when he smiled. 
Only his rimless eyeglasses conveyed a profes- 
sional air, although, as Ted said afterwards, just 
why rimless eyeglasses should make a person 
look as if he had just won a degree was more than 
she could say. 

“You precious old crowd, come here and say 
hello,” cried Kate, stepping down among them. 
“Here they are. Bob,” she called, turning to the 
Doctor. “Polly with the brown eyes, and 
Grandma here beside me. She is Ruth, you 
know. And the terrible soul twins, Sue and Ted, 
and Lady Vanitas. Where’s Crullers, Isabel?” 

“Disqualified for serving on the committee,” 
said Isabel. “Peggie and Natalie and Hallie 
and she couldn’t come, hut we’re letting them 
make walnut fudge for you. You always loved 
it, remember?” 


18 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“She does yet,” smiled the Doctor. 

“Oh, Kitty Katherine, how good you do 
look — ” Polly stopped short. Two hands shut 
her eyes, and a voice told her to guess who it 
was. 

“Caught you napping this trip, lady bird,” 
the Admiral said merrily. “Give you a dollar 
this minute if you can guess right.” 

“Only one guess?” asked Polly, laughing. 

“No, keep along until you get it.” 

So she tried. It was none of the girls, of that 
she felt sure. They all were accounted for. 
And it was somebody who had come down from 
Washington. Senator Yates’s family was down 
at White Chimneys in tidewater land, so it could 
not be any of them. Penelope had returned to 
New York after the motor trip the previous year, 
and Cary Dinwiddie was too busy getting ready 
for her marriage with Marbury Yates to make 
any flying trips to Queen’s Ferry. 

“Is it Aunt Faith?” she asked, but when she 
was turned around and kissed, it was not Aunt 
Faith at all, but Aunt Millicent from New York. 
As Polly said, it was simply wonderful to have 
three such aunts, just like having three fairy god- 
mothers. 


A GUIDEPOST OF FATE 


19 


“Oh, how she has grown,” Aunt Millicent ex- 
claimed, the tears rising and sparkling in her 
pretty dark eyes as she looked at Polly. “Six- 
teen, aren’t you, Polly?” 

Ruth came over from the group of girls 
around Kate, and laid one hand on Polly’s shoul- 
der. 

“Go on if you like. We’ll take care of the 
Doctor and Kate now.” 

But Polly insisted on performing all the in- 
troductions. Flushed and happy over the sur- 
prise, she wanted Mrs. Abbott to know each one 
of the school-mates who had grown so dear to 
her during the four years at Calvert. 

“Bless me, I know them all as it is,” exclaimed 
Aunt Milly, who was like the Admiral, plump 
and full of happiness. “Didn’t I get all the 
snapshots you sent me from last year’s trip, and 
I managed to pick each one out, too, just from 
Polly’s descriptions. Where are you going this 
year, girls?” 

“Oh, we haven’t decided that yet,” Ted an- 
swered for the others, but Sue helped her with 
details as usual, 

“It’s going to be a camp somewhere.” 

“Better come with us,” Kate said. “Doctor is 


20 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


to take charge this year of one of the city welfare 
camps in the mountains for children and mothers. 
That would be real work for you all.” 

“Where do you expect to go?” asked Mrs. 
Abbott. “You know I really feel like doing 
missionary work whenever I hear anyone speak 
of camping out. The last two years we have 
found such a beautiful place, and I want to tell 
about it.” 

“Tell it later, Milly,” advised the Admiral. 
“If you once get these girls started talking va- 
cations, you’ll never get away. They have been 
provisioning and coaling up for their next cruise 
for the last six months, and still nobody knows 
what port they’re heading for.” 

“We’ll see you soon again, Kate,” called Polly, 
as she followed in the wake of the Admiral to 
the carriage where waited Balaam. All smiles 
and bows, he sat up on the high seat, his old blue 
broadcloth coat brushed until it was speckless, 
and every button freshly polished in honor of 
“Miss Milly’s” home-coming. 

She tenderly reached up her hand to the old 
man. Balaam was a treasured part of Glen- 
wood and all its childhood memories, and now 
that Aunty Welcome had passed away, he was 


A GUIDEPOST OF FATE 21 

the oldest of the servants, older even than Aunt 
Mandy or Uncle Peter. 

“Land, chile, land! Gord bless yo’ soul,” he 
said unsteadily, taking off his high silk hat with 
a trembling hand. “If Ah ain’t jes’ glad ter see 
yer. Held yo’ in mah arms when yo’ was five 
hours old. Yes, Ah did. Welcome, she cum 
’long de lower hall, and she say, ‘Balaam,’ she 
say, ‘what yo’ guess Ah got hyar?’ ‘Bundle,’ 
says I. ‘Bundle! Pouf,’ ses she. ‘Most pre- 
cious prize package yo’ evah see, man.’ Den she 
show me, an she let me hole yo’ in mah arms fo’ 
jes’ a lil minute while Ah ses a prayer.” 

“I know you did, Balaam,” Mrs. Abbott re- 
sponded, her face all glowing with smiles. “It 
is so good to get back home again, and be be- 
loved.” 

“It’s the prettiest time of the year with all the 
roses in bloom,” Polly said. “I wish Uncle 
Thurlow and the boys could have come too.” 

“They don’t seem much like boys any more. 
Phil is studying architecture. He has always 
been a builder in his dreams of the future, you 
know. Jack has gone in for real estate; very 
prosaic, but he is thoroughly modern. He tells 
Phil he may improve the land after he has sold 


22 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


it. They are both of them dear boys. We’ll 
miss them this year when we go up to the castle. 
It’s the first time they have been left behind in 
the city, but they will come up for two weeks of 
vacation any way.” 

“Castle?” repeated the Admiral. “Aren’t you 
progressing rather rapidly, Milly? Is it an air 
castle of Phil’s or has Thurlow adopted an an- 
cestral home?” 

“Dear me, no, father,” laughed Mrs. Abbott. 
“Don’t you dare to laugh at me. Polly, I won- 
der you don’t train him better. It’s not an an- 
cestral home at all. It’s a big gray stone place 
with a tower on it way up in the mountains. An 
artist friend of Thurlow’s built it for himself and 
wandered away to some corner of the earth. I 
think he went on an assignment from one of the 
magazines, but any way he disappeared, and we 
heard of this lovely place, so Thurlow took it 
for three summers. It’s near Montalban in 
northern New York, up in the Helderberg 
range.” 

“I never heard of them before,” Polly put in, 
interestedly, as the carriage rolled along the roads 
leading towards Glen wood. “Where are they. 
Auntie? Sounds like ancient Germany. Cas- 


A GUIDEPOST OF FATE 


23 


ties and black knights and kobolds tumbling- 
down chimneys. ,, 

“Well, you’d find plenty of mysteries and sto- 
ries up there if you went. They lie between the 
Catskills and the rise of the Adirondacks. 
We’ve never tried camping there, but I should 
think it would he delightful. There is good 
water and plenty of wood, and you have several 
villages wdthin walking distance.” 

“Are there any people right near by? We 
did want to get out where it was really wild.” 

“It’s wild enough. You don’t want to be iso- 
lated. In case of a sprained ankle or any ill- 
ness, you’d be glad enough to be able to send 
three and a half miles down the mountain for a 
real doctor. But around the castle there are only 
a few old farms, and some cottages built by peo- 
ple who have come and gone for years, — artists, 
most of them. I tell Thurlow if I didn’t have 
one in my own family, I would get tired of seeing 
them around sketching.” 

The Admiral chuckled. Nobody knew better 
than he how proud Milly was of her tall artist 
husband. But Polly listened with wide eyes of 
speculation. 

“It sounds splendid. You know, Auntie, we 


24 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


girls are only waiting for a place to light on, and 
this wouldn’t be so very far away. Just from 
here to Washington, then on to New York. 
Could we go up the Hudson to Albany from 
there, and so over to wherever it is?” 

“Yes. Straight up from Albany to Montal- 
ban. There is a mountain lake too where you 
can alL swim and have canoes. You’d love it, 
Polly. One artist girl came up from New York 
last year with two friends and a dog, and they 
had a regular gypsy wagon and a tent. They 
had touched at all the nicest places along the road 
up from New York and finally chose our corner 
of the mountains as the best place to settle down 
in for the rest of the summer.” 

Polly slipped her arm around the shoulder 
nearest her. 

“I always believe in following guideposts of 
fate,” she said, with a little sigh of relief. “You 
don’t know how I’ve had those girls on my mind 
and been wondering about the best place to camp. 
You make a lovely guidepost, Aunt Milly.” 

“Do I?” laughed Aunt Milly. “Well, we can 
talk more about it after I get you to New York. 
Did they tell you you were going back with me 
for a week?” 


A GUIDEPOST OF FATE 


25 


“Not a single word,” Polly declared. “That 
must have been their secret besides your coming 
today. Why, they’ve been just like a couple of 
children at Christmas time, Auntie, planning and 
whispering, and thinking all the time that I 
didn’t know what they were up to.” 

“Do you think you want to, lady bird?” asked 
the Admiral. 

“Want to go?” Polly repeated. “Doesn’t he 
ask the foolishest questions? That’s what Aunty 
Welcome always said. I’m just crazy to go. I 
want to find out what you eat and wear and do 
when you’re camping.” 

“I can tell you,” said the Admiral. “You 
just fold back the curtains of the past, and step 
forth into the forests as near like primaeval man 
as you can get in these days. Forget the towns, 
and let all the clocks run down, and leave behind 
all calendars. Upon my word, Millicent, I be- 
lieve I’d like to do it myself. Haven’t camped 
out since I was a boy.” 

“We leave behind too much fun just as soon 
as we think we’re getting grown-up,” replied 
Mrs. Abbott. “I don’t believe in letting these 
youngsters have all the joy of spring and youth. 
Phil and Jack are much more serious and dig- 


26 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


nified than their father and me. I think you’d 
love it, Father.” 

“But there you are,” Polly said helplessly. 
“We want to get ’way off by ourselves, and here 
you’ll make it a regular family settlement. Sup- 
pose you take one mountain and we’ll take one, 
and you can wigwag at us when you feel lone- 
some or anxious.” 

“I think the first wigwag would come from the 
campers to the castle,” Aunt Milly laughed. 
“Oh,” she drew in a deep breath as Glenwood 
came into view; “how good it is to get home 
again !” 


CHAPTER III 

rate’s doctor bob 

Kate had said they planned to stay about a 
week at Oakleigh, the old Julian place down on 
the Bay shore. 

The following day Polly saw her and the Doc- 
tor both at church, and smiled over at them from 
the old square Page pew. Tradition told how 
years before there had been one portly old an- 
cestor of Polly’s called “King” Page. He had 
ruled over Glenwood many years and had stood 
at the head of affairs in Queen’s Ferry after 
the War of 1812. 

Polly had often heard Welcome tell about the 
old “King,” of his temper and his pride, and 
how his wonderful collars came up on each side 
of his face, and stood out in long stiff points. 
During sermon time he would fall asleep in the 
big pew, and old Dr. Philipps, who had been 
rector then, would turn towards him half uncon- 
sciously and preach a little louder and with in- 


28 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


creased emphasis until he had stirred “King” 
Page out of his Sunday dreams. 

Polly dearly loved the old stone church. 
There were not many pews in it, and a gallery 
encircled three sides. Outside the gray walls 
were covered with Virginia creeper, and there 
was an old churchyard in English fashion with 
clipped box hedge-rows around the burial plots, 
and flat marble tombstones as well as slate and 
granite ones. Today, when service was over, 
Mrs. Langdon and her sister lingered to greet 
old friends of Millicent’s, and Polly went over to 
where Kate had been showing the Doctor sev- 
eral historic stones. 

“Can’t you drive over to Oakleigh this after- 
noon, Polly?” she asked. “I’ve asked the girls 
over for tea. We don’t expect to stay very long 
and I want to talk over your summer plans with 
you. Perhaps we can help each other. Where 
do you expect to go?” 

“We don’t know yet. Aunt Milly is anxious 
for us to try the place up in the Helderberg 
Mountains where she has gone for two summers. 
You see, that wouldn’t be far from New York 
and the expense would be light because we could 
travel nearly all the way by boat.” 


KATE S DOCTOR BOB 


29 


“Dear me,” sighed Kate, “I do wish we could 
find a suitable place where the expense would be 
light.” 

“Are you going to camp this year?” 

“In a way we are. Doctor will have full 
charge of the largest welfare camp this summer 
and I shall help him of course. We want to find 
some place where the scenery is lovely, the lo- 
cation healthful, the expense light, and where 
there is nobody around who objects to children. 
Because we’ll probably have over a hundred at 
various times and we must be where we can 
spread out.” 

“Wouldn’t it be funny,” said Polly musingly, 
as she stooped to pick a sprig of myrtle from the 
ground, “if we all landed on the same spot of 
earth. Aunt Milly, and the kiddie camp, and 
ours.” 

“Coax Mrs. Abbott to drive over with the Ad- 
miral and you this afternoon, and talk to Doctor 
about it. He’s half persuaded as it is.” 

Polly laughed. The plot was one after her 
own heart. 

“I’d love to, Kitty Katherine. You know it 
won’t be the same this year, although I love all 
the girls, of course. But Ted won’t go, and 


30 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


Ruth thinks she can’t on account of her mother’s 
needing her, and if Ted won’t go, ten to one Sue 
drops out. That leaves only Isabel and myself 
of the original Hungry Six crowd that first year 
at school. Still there’ll be eight of us any way 
in the camp.” 

“Just look at the Doctor and the Admiral; 
they are like two old chums,” said Kate happily. 
“Bob’s having a splendid time.” 

“Grandfather always fastens on to anyone 
who will listen to him when he gets on the tomb- 
stones,” laughed Polly. “He simply adores 
anyone who has never seen the Page inscriptions 
and is willing to listen to him expound them. 
I’m going over right away to rescue the Doctor 
from my ancestors.” 

Threading her way through the narrow box- 
bordered paths where the violets were already 
blooming, she came to where the two men stood, 
and slipped her arm through the Admiral’s as 
she always did when she wanted him thoroughly 
under control. 

“Listen, Grandfather dear, we’re going to 
Oakleigh for tea and you can have the Doctor all 
to yourself this afternoon. Is he telling you all 
the history of the inscription, Doctor?” 


KATE’S DOCTOR BOB 


31 


“Not one of them, Miss Polly,” the Doctor as- 
sured her. “We’re discussing tents. The Ad- 
miral is telling me to buy tents at the government 
supply stores to use in my welfare camp. We 
plan to get some house as a central base, and then 
to have several tents.” 

“We shall want tents too. I don’t know much 
about the different kinds. Two sleeping tents 
with four cots each I planned to have, if they 
were large enough, and then a sort of cook tent 
with a flap. I like to eat out of doors.” 

“How about when it rains?” asked the Ad- 
miral. “You’re fair weather campers. I sup- 
pose you’d have a cave handy then, wouldn’t 
you?” 

“It really would be nice,” Polly agreed. “I’ve 
always liked the idea of living in a cave. Re- 
member, Grandfather, how once when we were 
little Sue Warner and I ran away down the 
river bank, and dug a cave? Mandy helped 
Aunt Welcome find us.” 

“Who’ll help find you this summer if you’re 
lost?” 

“But we’ll be so wise in woodcraft, and won’t 
get lost. You don’t know how we girls have 
posted ourselves about everything. We have 


32 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


read all the books we could get about the best 
way to camp out, only the queer part is that 
nearly every authority advises a different way.” 

“The fundamental rules are the same every- 
where,” the Doctor told her. “Get a healthful 
location. Take care of what you eat and where 
you get yoUr drinking water. Out in Califor- 
nia, where I came from, we boys used to take our 
ponchos, a blanket and a frying pan, a fishing 
rod and a rifle, and face the open any time.” 

“What did you eat?” asked Polly, anxiously. 
“We are going to bring our food supplies down 
to just as small a quantity as possible, and still 
I’m afraid we’ll need pack mules.” 

“Corn meal and bacon were our staff of life. 
Get near a lake or river where you are sure of 
a good fish supply. I would locate close to a 
farm house too, where one could buy fresh vege- 
tables, fruits, eggs and milk.” 

“I do believe you’re right,” Polly said thought- 
fully, “and we were planning to get just as far 
away from a chimney as we could.” 

“A chimney, child?” repeated the Admiral. 
“What for?” 

“I mean the sight of one anywhere in the sur- 
rounding view, don’t you know? It wouldn’t 


KATE’S DOCTOR BOB 


33 


seem just like camping if we could see houses 
anywhere around.” 

“Well, it’s good that you are able to pick and 
choose,” smiled the Doctor. “My poor little city 
kiddies are happy if they may only walk around 
on Mother Earth without any ‘keep off the grass’ 
signs.” 

“Where do they come from?” 

“Please don’t ask Bob any more questions, 
now, Polly,” Kate protested, coming up to them. 
“This afternoon you may talk camp gossip to 
your heart’s content. Mrs. Langdon sent me 
to tell you to come at once.” 

Polly said goodbye, and hurried on with the 
Admiral to catch up with the rest of the family. 

“Oh, I do like Kate’s Doctor Bob,” she said, 
snuggling down between the two aunts in the 
big carriage. “I always used to wish I had been 
born a twin, because I’d have been a lot of com- 
pany to myself, but I suppose if you marry some- 
body you really like and all your ideals and am- 
bitions are the same, it’s almost as good as hav- 
ing a twin around.” 

They drove past Ruth’s home to give her 
Kate’s invitation for tea at Oakleigh that after- 
noon, and she promised to see that it reached the 


34 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


other girls. Most of the regular girls up at the 
Hall had gone home for Easter, excepting Crul- 
lers and Peggie, and they had been at church, 
clustered with some of the younger Calvert 
girls, around Miss Honoria. Sometimes Peggie 
would get sleepy during the sermon hour, and 
then Miss Honoria would administer a gentle 
tap with the hymnal on the back of the hand 
nearest her. One day Peggie had roused with 
a start and answered aloud, “Yes, ma’am!” All 
the day pupils who lived at Queen’s Ferry, 
like Ted, Sue, and Polly, sat in their own family 
pews, but the others were “Honoria’s Chickens,” 
as Ted nicknamed them, and all kept close under 
the Calvert wings. 

“We’re ever so much more important than you 
day girls,” Crullers would assert. “We have to 
behave ourselves and keep up the traditions of 
Calvert in public.” 

Ruth stood beside the carriage, and heard 
Kate’s message doubtfully. 

“I’ll tell Sue, but I don’t think I shall be able 
to go because Mother has one of her lonesome 
days.” 

“Oh, dear,” exclaimed Polly, when they drove 
on. “I do hope, if I am ever laid up with any- 


KATE’S DOCTOR BOB 


35 


thing, that I won’t have lonesome days and make 
everyone stay around until I get over my 
glooms.” 

“Never mind, girlie,” Aunt Milly answered 
comfortably. “Ruth is love’s little martyr. 
Abby Brooks has gloomed ever since she was a 
girl at school with me at Calvert Hall. And it 
isn’t ill health that causes it, either. It’s just 
disposition. One of the most interesting and 
wonderful old persons I ever met is a friend of 
your uncle Thurlow’s in New York. He used 
to be a diplomat, and has traveled all over the 
world, but has been blind for years. Yet once 
a week he gathers around him his circle of friends, 
and he is the happiest and most contented of 
them all. That is Stanton Phelps, Father;” 
turning to the Admiral, “you remember him, 
don’t you? It was his son who built our castle, 
and then disappeared, Lindsay Phelps.” 

The Admiral smiled and nodded his head. 

“Polly must go with you to visit him and pre- 
sent my very best remembrances and wishes. 
He used to be one of our old crowd of boys. 
Brock Cary and Stant Phelps — ” 

“Was Brock Cary the old Commodore we met 
last year at Sunnyside?” 


36 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“He didn’t seem a bit old to me,” chuckled 
the Admiral. “Just a boy, a mere boy, but it is 
forty years ago and more since we had such good 
times together. Be mighty sweet to Mr. Phelps, 
Polly, mighty sweet, and mind you don’t tell 
him you think he’s old.” 

“I love to hear grandfather tell about when he 
was young, Aunt Milly,” Polly said later, when 
they had reached Glenwood. “It doesn’t seem 
long ago at all to him, and when I look back to 
when I was five or six, it seems ages ago. Did 
you feel yourself growing up all at once when 
you were sixteen?” 

“Not all at once because I was always short 
for my age, and the day I did put my hair up 1 
cried, I remember. I must have been seventeen.” 

“Seventeen,” Polly repeated regretfully. “I 
don’t yyant to put mine up then. I like to braid 
it and wind it around my head like you see in the 
Rosetti pictures. But it does seem as if some- 
how I have grown up very fast this last year. 
Maybe it is on account of its being the last year 
at school. We’ve simply crammed knowledge. 
Some of the girls expect to go through college, 
and take special courses, but I don’t want to, 
Aunt Milly.” 


KATE’S DOCTOR BOB 


37 


Aunt Milly smiled leniently, but said nothing. 

“I want to coax grandfather and Aunt Evelyn 
to travel with me. If I could I’d get a private 
ear and fix it all up, and just couple it on to any 
train I felt like taking. Grandfather only 
laughs at me, though. He and Aunt Evelyn 
still treat me as if I were a child, and I suppose 
they always will. One day I told grandfather 
I didn’t see what I’d ever find to study about 
after I left school.” 

“What did he say?” Millicent’s eyes twin- 
kled just as the Admiral’s had a habit of doing 
when he was inwardly amused. 

Polly frowned seriously. 

“Why, he told me that scientists say the brain 
isn’t fully developed until you’re eighteen.” 

“And some are never developed,” Aunt Milly 
laughed. “Run long, childie, and get dressed. 
Though I know just what you mean, and all the 
problems you are facing. Don’t try to cut all 
the Gordian knots at once, Polly.” 

Polly slipped two arms close around her neck, 
and rubbed her cheek against hers like a kitten. 

“You’re such an old dear, Aunt Milly. I’d 
forgotten how awfully nice you are. Aunt Eve- 
lyn reminds me somehow of the king’s daughter 


38 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 

in the Bible, remember? She was ‘all glorious.’ 
And Aunt Faith is tender and sad. But you 
just seem human, you know.” 

Aunt Millicent patted the brown hair lovingly. 
“It’s a dear old everyday world after all, Polly, 
and we need a love and a faith that will stand 
plenty of everyday wear and tear. Remember 
the princess who was given her choice between 
the prince who came dressed in velvet and gold 
and the youth in woodland green? She chose 
the forester lad because he would wear better.” 

“I wouldn’t have, not unless I meant to step 
down from my throne, and leave off my own 
velvet and gold. She should have chosen the 
one that matched her own estate,” said Polly. 
“But maybe she loved the other one, and only 
tried to make an excuse for choosing him.” 

Milly gave a little sigh, almost involuntary, 
and looked down at the face so near her own. 

“How soon our princess will be grown up,” she 
said half wistfully, for Polly was the only repre- 
sentative of the girl element in the younger por- 
tion of the family. “I wonder who you’ll marry, 
Polly?” 

“The right one,” Polly said teasingly. “When 
I see him coming along will I be sure to know 


KATE’S DOCTOR BOB 39 

him, I wonder? Did you care for Uncle Thur- 
low the very first time you ever saw him?” 

Milly laughed softly, and put her questioner 
away. There was a pretty flush in her cheeks. 

“I think perhaps I did. Run along and get 
dressed this minute.” 


CHAPTER IV 


THE ROCKE OF THE DAWN 

Oakleigh was one of the old Bay Shore es- 
tates, and Polly had loved to visit down there 
when she was a little girl. 

The drive turned in from the main road past 
low, broad stone posts, and wound up through 
woodland thickets full of laurel and rhododen- 
dron bushes. Gray, and weather-stained, the 
house stood high on the hillside, its wide pillared 
galleries facing the beautiful view of the Bay. 

Here old Major Julian, Kate’s father, used to 
sit in the cool shade in summer and in the sunny 
corners when the days grew chill. He was usu- 
ally to be found with his wooden peg stretched 
out on a chair before him, plenty of books 
and papers at hand, and a couple of old setters 
beside him asleep on the ground. Here he sat 
and lived over the past, and Polly had often 
coaxed him to tell of the conquest of Indian lands 
that lay beyond the Mississippi. 

He had been sent west in the early seventies, 


THE ROCIvE OF THE DAWN 41 


and could tell tales of fights with the Apaches 
and Piutes down through Nevada and Arizona 
that thrilled one. The Admiral drove out to 
visit him regularly, and Polly usually accom- 
panied him. She loved to sit and play with Nip 
and Tuck, the two setters, while the old Major 
sat gazing off at Chesapeake Bay, his gray eyes 
clear and sharp under their bushy eyebrows, his 
face always ready to wrinkle into a smile over 
some of the Admiral’s quips. 

He had been unable to meet Kate and her 
Doctor at the station on her arrival, and Mrs. 
Julian rarely left him alone, but Queen’s Ferry 
believed it could trust the Major to stand by 
his colors, and welcome the man who had taken 
Kate away from Oakleigh into the whirl of city 
life. 

On their arrival Sunday afternoon, the girls 
left the Doctor to finish his chat with the Ad- 
miral, and Aunt Milly renewed her old friend- 
ship with Mrs. Julian. Mrs. Langdon always 
liked to have the Major all to herself. He was 
full of southern chivalry. As Kate said, “If it 
hadn’t been for Dad’s wooden leg, he’d have out- 
danced every youngster in southern Virginia, so 
there’s a providence in all things.” 


42 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“Crullers can’t go this summer after all,” Hal- 
lie said as soon as they had left the house. “We 
left her weeping.” 

“Peggie lent her the top sheet from her bed, 
and I gave her a bottle of smelling salts that 
Annie May left in the dormitory when she was 
making beds.” Nat’s brown eyes fairly gleamed 
with mischief. “She’s perfectly wretched, Polly. 
Just got a letter from home yesterday afternoon. 
Her mother says she has trotted around vaca- 
tion time long enough, and she’s needed at 
home.” 

“What a pity we can’t have an auxiliary camp 
for lonesome mothers,” said Polly. “Then Ruth 
could go and Ted’s mother and now Crul- 
lers’s.” 

“Well, I think if Mrs. Adams could only know 
how we need Crullers to keep us all good-natured, 
she’d let her come,” Hallie declared. “Jane 
Daphne is part of the joy of nations. She 
should not be narrowed down to one family in 
her earthly scope.” 

“Does she still eat crackers in bed?” asked 
Kate. “I do think that was Crullers’s worst 
habit, really. To have her visit you just as you 
were settling down for the night and leave 


THE ROCKE OF THE DAWN 43 


cracker crumbs in the bed! I never found a pun- 
ishment to suit the crime. It was awful.” 

“But she’s a dear, anyway,” Polly protested, 
tenderly. “I do hope she can go with us. 
Nipper is almost as much fun, only she doesn’t 
stumble over everything, like Crullers.” 

“Nipper? She’s a new girl to me, isn’t she?” 

“She’s Vera Morris. We met her and Betty, 
her sister, last summer on the motor trip. Mar- 
gery’s new too, Margery Lawrence, and they’re 
all three going with us camping. We call her 
Pipes. Oh, Kate, she’s got the funniest little 
high pitched soprano you ever heard, and she will 
sing, you know. They’re spending the Easter 
vacation down home.” 

The girls had strolled with Kate down from 
the veranda, where tea was to be served later, to 
the old-fashioned garden and then to the grove. 
From the house the grounds of Oakleigh sloped 
to the shore of the Bay. The paths wound in 
and out through a grove of trees, dipping into 
miniature ravines, and rising to heights where 
rustic seats had been placed invitingly. Some 
gentle Virginia deer nibbled at the grass down in 
the hollows. Polly could remember how she had 
played they were wild unicorn back in the days 


44 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


when, as a child, she had driven over with the 
Admiral. 

One favorite spot of Kate’s was up where the 
path led out of the grove and ended abruptly on 
a high ridge of land overlooking the water. On 
its summit was a great flat rock, upheld at each 
corner by smaller stones, and hollowed out in the 
center. Steps had been cut in the rocky slope 
to reach it, and the girls never tired of hearing 
its story from the Major’s lips. 

It was said that long ago, before Sir Walter 
Raleigh had ever looked upon the shores of this 
virgin land, the Indians had used the old rock as 
a sacrificial altar to the rising sun. The Major 
had an account of the ceremonial in an old docu- 
ment written by some bold voyageur who had 
ventured up the Chesapeake, Mother of Waters, 
and had found there the peaceable, picturesque 
people. 

“For an houre before sunrise theye did kneele, 
men and women bothe, upon the earthe before 
this rock, which they called Rocke of the Dawn. 
There was no sounde to be heard, save onlie twit- 
terings of wakening birds and the strange drums 
on which these people beat. When the first 
beame of heavenlie light was beheld above the 


THE ROCKE OF THE DAWN 45 


horizon, the fire upon the altar then was lighted 
and the sacrifice consumed thereon. This was 
the firste creature killed by the hunters since sun- 
down. And as the smoke did ascend righte 
pleasantlie, the younge maidens rose and danced 
with much grace and beaut ie around the rock.” 

When they arrived at the old rock now, Polly 
sat down on it, her feet tucked up under her, and 
gazed off at the blue waters, gleaming dazzlingly 
bright in the sunlight. 

“Remember, Kate,” she said, “How Sue and 
Ruth and I used to come out to see you and make 
believe that we were the dancing maidens of 
grace and beauty? Kate would never con- 
descend to caper, girls, but she would climb the 
rock, and play she was high priestess of the 
dawn.” 

“Oh, I love all the old ceremonials and folk 
lore,” Kate exclaimed. “It all comes back now 
that I’m home again. It’s the oddest thing, but 
in New York, all this seems to fade away like a 
dream. I mean once you’re plunged right into 
real life.” 

“But this is real life, isn’t it?” asked Hallie, 
digging the accumulated leaves out of the hol- 
lowed space on the altar. 


46 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“I know just what Kate means,” Isabel broke 
in, enthusiastically. “Yonder in that great, 
teeming whirlpool of human endeavor — ” 

“Whoa, my lady!” cried Polly, teasingly. 
“You’re taking a poetic flight. That sounds 
just like 

“ ‘In the world’s broad field of battle. 

In the bivouac of life — ’ ” 

“But that’s what I mean exactly,” protested 
Isabel. “We never see anything of real life here 
in Queen’s Ferry the way Kate does in the city. 
And when we don’t see it and know all about it, 
how can we feel sympathy?” 

“You’d all feel sympathy soon enough if you 
could go, as I do, to the children’s clinic with 
the Doctor. It makes one long to gather them 
up, the poor little warped products of fate and 
circumstance, and take them out to where light 
and air can heal them. I’m so glad he is to have 
charge of the welfare camp this year. We ex- 
pect to look after over a hundred children, that 
are to be sent up in relays. If we had more 
money, we’d be able to do for more children.” 

“How much does it take?” asked Polly quickly. 

“Altogether? I don’t know,” answered Kate. 



Her Attention on the Semi-circle of Girls 








' ■ 


























’ 







THE ROCKE OF THE DAWN 47 


“It’s hard to figure exactly, but they say five 
dollars means a two weeks’ vacation to a city 
kiddie.” 

“Five dollars! And here we girls have saved 
about two hundred so far towards our summer 
camping, and plan to get more before June. 
That would mean forty children bound for the 
open.” 

“Now, Polly, quit,” Natalie told her vigor- 
ously. “We’ve worked hard and worried lots to 
garner in those shekels, every last lone dollar. 
And now you’re seeing visions of donating it all 
to Kate’s pet charity. We’re a summer charity 
all by ourselves.” 

“But listen a minute.” Polly left Chesapeake 
to look after itself, and turned her attention on 
the semi-circle of girls on the pine needles around 
the rock. Overhead the tall pines swayed their 
boughs lazily in the light off-shore breeze. 
“Everybody that you’ve ever heard of who has 
tried camping out gets fearfully tired of doing 
nothing. I mean girls. The boys pitch in and 
work, but girls always say after the novelty has 
worn off, they don’t know what to do. They’re 
usually ready to come home by about the second 
week.” 


48 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“Tired of doing nothing?” repeated Peggie 
eagerly. “That seems funny, Polly. When we 
camp out up in Wyoming, we never think of get- 
ting tired. We all go with father and mother 
the way we did two years ago when you girls 
were there, and each one has certain things to 
attend to; dishes to wash, or cooking to do, or 
beds to make, — something any way. And after 
the camp work’s done, you want to tramp off and 
collect things, or fish. Why, the time just flies!” 

“It’s because you’re a ranch girl and know how 
to camp, having been every year. Down east 
it’s all different. Isn’t it, Kate?” 

“The Campfire Girls are changing things a 
good deal,” Kate answered. 

“Betty and Nipper belonged to them last year 
up at Birchwood Camp in the Berkshires,” 
Natalie said. “They say it was glorious, the 
ceremonials and the camp spirit, and everything.” 

“Well, we can’t turn into Campfire Girls tem- 
porarily,” Polly protested. “We’re just run- 
ning up for one summer. And we’ll have plenty 
of fun, girls, ceremonials, and camp feasts, and 
fishing and swimming, and all that, but let’s get 
in something else. Nat almost hit it when she 
spoke of the camp spirit. We’ll have plenty of 


THE ROCKE OF THE DAWN 49 


camp spirit. We always do dandy team work 
together, and we don’t scrap or fuss.” 

“We did last year,” said Sue, meditatively. 
“Ted and I.” 

“And Hallie and Betty will get tangled up 
sure as fate if we put them in the same tent,” 
Polly agreed laughingly, “but I mean anything 
serious. So it seems as if we’re fitted for taking 
up some real work that may help others.” 

“I know.” Ruth smiled over at her. It was 
rarely that “Grandma” spoke, and today, though 
she had managed to get away while a neighbor 
stayed with the “lonesome” mother, she had 
seemed unusually quiet. “Polly sees those hun- 
dred and one children that Kate and her Doctor 
are going to bring up out of New York, and she 
wants you girls to pitch in and help.” 

“Not all of the time,” Polly added. “But just 
supposing we did get a camping place close by 
where Kate locates. We could have loads of 
our own fun, and still help look after the welfare 
kiddies. The summer would mean something 
then. We’re getting older now, girls, don’t you 
know — ” 

“We’re not, Polly,” protested Hallie. “I’m 
only fourteen, and Betty’s going on fifteen. 


50 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


Nat’s only fifteen and Peggie’s betwixt and be- 
tween. We don’t want to work in vacation 
time.” 

“Well, don’t, blessed child,” Polly returned 
soothingly. “We’ll form a Toddlers’ Brigade, 
and you can play all day long. But no bloomers 
or middies for you. Rompers.” 

She dodged laughingly as a volley of pine 
needles was fired at her by the infants. 

“But you’re not in earnest, are you, Polly?” 
asked Kate, her dark eyes under their level 
brows regarding the eager, joyous face up on the 
rock a bit anxiously. “It takes more than will- 
ingness and enthusiasm to handle such a propo- 
sition as we’re going to tackle, you know. It 
isn’t all fun or glory either. We’re allowed four 
helpers, and two of those do the housework. 
The children range from four years old up to 
seven. I’d love to have you, but could only 
undertake to pay for two, you see, five a week 
with board.” 

“If we earned money that way, we could take 
turns, and work in pairs, then give up some of 
our money to the welfare treasure box. Would 
we have to keep them clean, Kate, or teach the 
young mind the beauties of nature?” 


THE ROCKE OF THE DAWN 51 


“Both, I guess, Isabel,” Kate said amusedly. 
“Some of the mothers are allowed to come with 
the sickly little ones, and they always help with 
the care of the others. It is more likely you girls 
would have to amuse and teach them. They will 
be just the age when they’re into something every 
minute.” 

“When I go to New York with Aunt Milly,” 
Polly declared, “I’ll find out all about the place 
in the Helderbergs. And about camp outfits 
and supplies too. What color rompers do you 
want, Hallie?” 

“Never you mind getting me any rompers, 
Captain,” Hallie answered sturdily. “If the 
rest want to work, I’ll work too. I don’t mind 
if we take it in relays, but I’m just longing to 
live in a tent and sleep on pine boughs. I’ve 
heard Nipper tell of bacon bats until it makes 
my mouth water. We tried to have one once, 
remember, Peg? Tell Mrs. Elliott about it.” 

“It was up in Hallie’s room,” Peggie said 
shyly. “We coaxed Annie May to give us some 
lean strips of bacon, and tried to toast it on hat- 
pins over the gas jet, but it dripped fearfully. 
So Hallie held crackers under it while I toasted, 
and it was awfully good.” 


52 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“Tasted kind of funny, though,” Nat declared. 
“Maybe it was the gas. We’ll use hickory in the 
woods. Isn’t it time we were going back?” 

Polly rose, and stretched out both arms to the 
sun just dipping below the fringe of woodland 
in the west. 

“Good-night, sweet prince!” she called. 
“Wonder what the Indians called him.” 

“I suppose we must be going,” Kate said. 
“We always stay down here talking and forget 
about everything else. But this time the old 
sacrifice rock really did start something.” 

“Let’s dedicate the spot to Kate’s Kiddies,” 
suggested Ruth. 

So, laughingly, hut with an undercurrent of 
deeper meaning and intent, the girls faced the 
sunset and swept it low curtseys before they went 
down the old path, Indian file. Kate’s arm 
rested lightly around Polly’s shoulders as they 
two came last together. It was a newborn, silent 
partnership. 


CHAPTER V 


wanted: a grove 

By the end of the week it had been settled that 
the camping club should aim for a summer at 
Montalban. As Kate told them, it did away 
with all uncertainty for the girls, and with Mrs. 
Abbott so near them at the castle, and the proba- 
bility of the welfare camp being pitched in their 
vicinity as well, there was no need for taking any 
extra precautions. 

“Doctor and I are going to run up and look 
the ground over as soon as we get back to town, 
and if it is suitable, and we can find a house, we 
will go there. You can’t look after a lot of chil- 
dren in tents. There must be an old farmhouse 
up in those mountains some place. Come and 
see us in the city, Polly, surely now. I want you 
to know about the work there.” 

Polly promised. She was so excited over the 
prospect of a week in New York that she was 
“treading the air,” as Ted said. 


54 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“It’s terrible to have to watch your prepara- 
tions and know that I can’t go this year,” Ted 
said. “Will you miss me, girls?” 

“Miss you?” repeated Crullers, ecstatically. 
“I’ll miss you awfully, Ted. Who was it saved 
me from Isabel when things went wrong? Who 
was it always saw that I had plenty to eat at all 
times? Who’ll protect me now? Miss you, 
Ted?” 

“There, that’s sufficient,” Ted said, compla- 
cently. “Don’t chant at me any more. Makes 
me think of the prophet: 

“ ‘Let my right hand forget her cunning if I forget 
thee, oh, Jerusalem!’ 

Crullers, you’re a dear old standby, any way.” 

“Thought you couldn’t go this year. Crullers?” 
Polly looked up from the pad of paper on which 
she was figuring. It was after lunch the day be- 
fore her departure, and the girls had come over 
for a last chat. The Admiral was lying down, 
sleeping. In the garden the two aunts wandered 
along the old paths, living over their girlhood 
days there together, with Uncle Peter trotting 
after them happily, letting them help him in plan- 
ning the spring planting. 


WANTED: A GROVE 


55 


Polly usually spent this hour in mid-afternoon 
out on the broad veranda, excepting when she 
was at school. The west corner had been fitted 
up with long Japanese shades and willow fur- 
niture, with hammocks hung from long chains 
overhead, and here the girls had gathered. 
“Pipes” Lawrence was back, but not the Morris 
girls. 

“Maybe I can,” Crullers replied happily. “I 
knew you’d all miss me so terribly that I wrote 
to Mother every single day, beautiful beseeching 
letters that would make the Obelisk weep. It 
really depends on what Polly’s going to feed us 
on in camp. Nipper declared you favored pel- 
lets, Polly.” 

“Soup pellets,” amended Margery. “I heard 
her.” 

“We’ll make you assistant cook, Crullers, and 
then you can get all you want to eat. How can 
you worry over what we’re going to eat, any 
way?” Polly tapped her forehead with her pen- 
cil, and looked with a far-away glance at the strip 
of blue sky just visible beyond Crullers’s head. 
“I want to rest and invite my soul. Who said 
that, girls?” 

“Thoreau, when he was building that dear lit- 


56 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


tie shack of his down by Walden Pond that 
cost about fifty-nine cents,” Ted informed 
her. 

“Just you let Honoria hear you speaking 
lightly of that shack or its builder,” Ruth 
warned, “and there will be trouble. Any way, 
I think it was Marcus Aurelius.” 

“I want a grove, girls,” Hallie announced. 
“Let’s advertise for a grove in the Helderbergs 
or thereabouts. A beautiful, secluded grove 
with rural free delivery and a lake or a river. 
Then we can get old clothes and a tent and some 
fish-poles. That’s all we’ll need.” 

“It is going to be much cheaper than last year, 
really. Only outfits and fares and food on the 
simple life plan. We can go nearly all the way 
by boat, too.” 

“Oh, why not hike?” Natalie asked. “Nipper 
says they always hiked at Birchwood.” 

“Nipper and Nat always want the strenuous 
life like Ted,” Isabel sighed. “I don’t want to 
hike, girls. We’ll be in the wilds of Canada yet, 
Polly, if you don’t look out, carrying canoes and 
duffle bags on our backs.” 

“I won’t,” Ted declared dolefully. “It’s all 
settled. I can’t go this year. Mother says she 


WANTED: A GROVE 57 

does think I might stay at home for one summer 
and get acquainted with the family.” 

“And of course, if Ted can’t go, I don’t want 
to,” Sue added. “We’ve always been chums, 
even if we did scrap. I’ll keep her company.” 

“Well, we’re surely losing two joyous hearts 
out of our company of pilgrims. I don’t like 
charter members to drop out,” Polly told them. 
“Peggie, you’re sure of going, aren’t you?” 

Peggie nodded, blushing as she always did 
when she was addressed abruptly. 

“Mother promised I could this year because 
last year I had to go west for Jean’s wedding.” 

“What about a faithful chaperon?” asked 
Sue. “If Ted and I were going along of course 
you would not need anyone to look after you, but 
as it is, I think you must have a guardian angel.” 

“We haven’t picked her out yet,” Polly an- 
swered. “Let’s lay her on the knees of the gods 
until we’ve settled this food supply question, and 
what you girls want me to buy for you in New 
York. I don’t see why we can’t all wear serge 
skirts and dark blue middies with white ones for 
best. In camp we can wear bloomers. We’ll 
have to do our own washing and economy counts. 
No tubs either. That means we’ll be like the 


58 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


French peasant girls and wash on stones in the 
handiest brook.” 

“Listen, girls,” said Ruth suddenly. She had 
been helping Polly make up her lists, three dif- 
ferent ones. “Here they are finished; the things 
you’ll need just for your own personal use, the 
food supplies, and the general camp outfit from 
a lantern to tent pins. I made out the list 
of eatables for eight girls to last four 
weeks.” 

“Won’t we last any longer than that?” Polly 
asked mischievously. “I’d double it, Ruth.” 

“Well, if you’re going to help Kate, you can 
earn extra money and stay longer. Once you 
get there, it won’t take so much just to live. 
And then here is a list of camp furnishings. 
Polly, don’t you think it would be better for you 
to just get the prices and compare values at dif- 
ferent stores, then order from here after you get 
back? They can ship the goods direct to wher- 
ever you go, Montalban, isn’t it? and that will 
save your handling any of it at all. Each girl 
must furnish her own kit and bring her own 
towels, one pair of blankets, and a poncho.” 

“What’s a poncho?” asked several of the girls. 

“Some kind of a pony, isn’t it?” Crullers asked, 


WANTED: A GROVE 59 

thoughtfully. “No, that’s a pinto. What is a 
poncho? Something good to eat?” 

“It’s invaluable as an article of food, child,” 
Ted assured her. “When attacked by starvation 
in the wilds, you take a slice of your poncho and 
broil it delicately, or it can he cut into small 
pieces and made into a savory ragout.” 

“Ted!” laughed Ruth. “Aren’t you ashamed 
to lead Crullers along like that. It isn’t so at 
all, Jane Daphne. A poncho is a big water- 
proof cloth that can be used as a covering or as 
a sleeping bag. I guess you can wrap things in 
it too, and roll it up like soldiers do their 
blankets, and carry it around your shoulders.” 

“There’s a hole in the center where you can 
stick your head through, and walk out in the 
pouring rain smiling and serene,” Sue said hap- 
pily. “Nipper’s got some snapshots of herself 
at the Birchwood camp, where she looks like a 
towseled terrier with her head sticking jauntily 
out of her poncho.” 

“Don’t forget a medicine box,” cautioned Peg- 
gie. “Remember at the ranch how handily the 
arnica and witch hazel came in.” 

“I’ve put that all down,” Ruth said. “How 
about good fishing rods, girls?” 


60 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“You just cut the poles in the woods and carry 
lines and hooks up with you,” Crullers answered. 

“Jane Daphne!” Polly’s tone was almost 
plaintive. “Do you think you can furnish a 
camp like ours with its fish supply, catch any 
kind that comes along and only use those wobbly 
little wood poles?” 

“You ought to get real bamboo fishing rods 
and real hooks and flies,” Ruth declared posi- 
tively. “That’s why men and boy campers al- 
ways have good luck fishing, and girls will face 
the wilds with a line and a bent pin and expect 
to land trout and pickerel. Crullers would 
starve if she relied on fish chowder.” 

“Oh, I know,” Polly exclaimed. “We’ll get 
boxes of the real bait. They’re all colors, flies 
and frogs and minnows and Dobsons. All col- 
ors and striped like barber poles, some of them; 
aren’t they, Ruth?” 

“I’ve seen them,” Ted said, quite calmly. 
“Crystal eyes and pink and green fins. Regular 
circus crawfish and minnows. Quiet, home abid- 
ing mountain fish go perfectly crazy over them.” 

“Ted, be quiet a minute. All I can see now 
is a picture of Crullers in bloomers and middy 
trolling circus bait in mountain streams. We’ll 


WANTED: A GROVE 


61 


take her in different effective poses and send the 
pictures down to you and Sue.” 

“Say, seriously, girls, don’t forget to take 
plenty of films along,” Ted warned. “Last year 
I was sending ahead for extra supplies all along 
the line. And each girl should take along a 
camp log-book too, and stick in her pictures 
under the right dates. You can make up your 
own if you like. Get a lot of art mounts and 
stick your ‘snaps’ on them, then bind with white 
birch bark. They’re stunning.” 

“Each one ought to have her own kodak,” 
Polly agreed. “If you don’t, you’re apt to get 
them all mixed up, the films and pictures both, 
so that nobody gets a complete set.” 

“I shall bestow my kodak on Peggie,” Sue 
said, “because she doesn’t talk as much as the 
rest of you, and artists are always silent peo- 
ple.” 

Peggie flashed a quick, grateful glance over at 
her. Only the older girls like Sue, who had been 
at the ranch two years before, knew what a treat 
lay ahead for the girl from the Crossbar. It 
was the first summer she had ever spent away 
from home, but Polly had written several letters 
out to Mrs. Murray begging her to let Peggie 


62 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


stay at Glenwood when school closed, and the 
Admiral himself would be responsible for her. 

“There is two hundred and fourteen dollars in 
the treasury,” Sue said. “I can’t be treasurer 
if I’m not goin$, any more than Buth could. 
Why don’t you elect Nat, or let me appoint her 
as my substitute? Nat’s fifteen, so she has some 
poise and balance.” 

“Nipper’s nearly sixteen,” Natalie replied 
with dignity. “It isn’t a question of age. It’s 
just natural aptitude. Pass over the treasury 
box, Sue, and I’ll guard it.” 

“I won’t buy anything for the trip until I’ve 
looked around and compared prices,” said Polly. 
“Aunt Milly will go around with me and help, 
I know.” 

“You’re our official scout, Polly,” Hallie sug- 
gested. 

“Scout of the commissary department,” Nata- 
lie corrected. “You know, girls, somehow I feel 
as if this is going to be different from other 
campings. I’ve camped before, but we never 
took it seriously.” 

“Well, we’ll take this seriously before we get 
through,” Polly declared cheerfully. “We are 
going to be different from other campers. We’ll 


WANTED: A GROVE 


63 


rest and invite our souls, but between times we’ll 
go over and help Kate and her Doctor teach their 
kiddies to be happy and healthy. Here is an old 
rule for happiness, girls. Aunt Milly told it to 
me, and I’m going to burn it bn a strip of bark,, 
and hang it on the tent pole over the mirror. 
Then every one will see it often. Now listen. 

“ "Something to do. 

Someone to love. 

Something to hope for/ ” 

“ I like that,” said Ruth thoughtfully. 

“What do we hope for?” asked Crullers. 

“Dinner time, goose,” Polly answered, laugh- 
ingly. “That is what you’ll be hoping for most 
of the time.” 

On Saturday morning the Admiral personally 
conducted her down to the railway station with 
Aunt Milly. Polly had asked the girls not to 
come, but just as the train was moving slowly 
out, Crullers ran around the corner of the sta- 
tion, a great bouquet of violets in one hand. 

“Polly, catch!” she called, and threw it straight 
at the open window. 

“Isn’t that just like Crullers,” Polly said, 
burying her nose in the flowers. “We used to 


64 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


call her ‘Eleventh hour Jane.’ 
pink rompers for her after all. 
dear.” 


I won’t price 
She’s an old 


CHAPTER VI 
in takeshi’s domain 

“I love to go to places where I’ve never been 
before,” Polly declared, coming up the stairs 
from the tracks at the Pennsylvania station in 
New York. “What a splendid tomb this place 
would make. Aunt Milly, wouldn’t it? Isn’t it 
Mahomet whose remains are in some sort of a 
casket suspended in midair with a lodestone? 
Crullers would like that.” 

“There’s Thurlow, bless his dear heart,” Mrs. 
Abbott cried, hurrying ahead. “Never mind 
Mahomet now, Polly. See him standing there 
gazing around as helpless as a baby. Lost and 
bewildered in a crowd without either me or 
Takeshi. Here we are, dear.” 

Polly had not seen her uncle in several years. 
She had always liked him — her “one special 
uncle,” as she called him. Mrs. Langdon was a 
widow and Aunt Faith was unmarried, so Uncle 


66 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


Thurlow had to bear the avuncular honors of the 
family. He was very tall and boyish looking, 
with curly iron gray hair, and brown eyes full of 
fun and good humour. 

“Well, Polly,” he asked, “how are all your 
numerous family? The Admiral and Aunt 
Evelyn, Uncle Pete and Mandy? Are there 
any more?” 

“Lucy Lee and Stoney,” Polly amended as 
they crossed the great central concourse towards 
the Seventh Avenue entrance. “They are all 
well. Oh, yes, and Balaam. We forgot him. 
He’s specially well. Aunt Evelyn said when she 
first came that we didn’t need them all, but we 
do. Mandy cooks and Uncle Pete takes care of 
the garden. Then Balaam has the carriage 
house and the stable on his mind, he says, and 
Lucy Lee is housemaid. Stoney just takes care 
of Grandfather. When all Mandy’s children 
grow up, we’re going to find them something to 
do too.” 

“I don’t doubt it a bit,” said the big artist 
uncle, merrily. “How will they all ever get 
along without you, Polly, for a whole week?” 

“But I’ve been away all summer long, so 
they’re quite used to it now.” Polly said it in all 


IN TAKESHI’S DOMAIN 67 

seriousness. “And as long as Aunt Evelyn is 
there, I know Grandfather will be all right.” 

“I think I’d get daily bulletins to be sure,” 
Uncle Thurlow said teasingly. 

The Abbott home was on West Twelfth Street 
off Fifth Avenue, down in the old section of the 
city. It made Polly think of some Washington 
houses, red brick with white stone trimmings, and 
a deep set colonial doorway with a brass knocker 
on it. The window boxes held crocuses in bloom, 
and beside the doorstep were small lemon trees. 
As the taxicab drew up in front of the house, 
Polly leaned forward and saw the flowers. 

“Aren’t they dear and pretty? We’re going 
to have a flower festival next month, Aunt Milly, 
each girl to represent some spring flower, you 
know, and I’m to be the crocus. What verse 
could I say? It’s to be for our vacation fund, 
and we want it to be novel. Ted said I ought 
to be glad that I was so delicate and exclusive 
that the poets had passed me by.” 

“I remember one that I used to like,” Millicent 
said. “Try this: 

“ ‘And crocuses a queen might don, 

If weary of a golden crown. 

And still appear as royal !” 


68 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“You always have the right thing tucked up 
your sleeve.” Polly was just going to lay her 
cheek against that sleeve when the door opened 
and she caught her first glimpse of the Japanese 
houseboy, Takeshi. Before the summer was 
over Takeshi had become a familiar object to all 
of the girls up at Montalban, but Polly never 
forgot her first impression of him. He was so 
dignified and yet so smiling and bland. He 
wore eye glasses and had a curious little droop- 
ing moustache, and the most serious manner pos- 
sible. He met them as if he had been the host 
and they the guests to some mysterious cere- 
monial. 

“Why, Aunt Milly, the way he handled Uncle 
Thurlow was too funny!” Polly said as they went 
upstairs to Mrs. Abbott’s room. “Just like a 
little terrier taking care of a big St. Bernard. 
He actually pets him, doesn’t he?” 

“Takeshi pets us ail and bosses us terribly, 
Polly. Your Uncle brought him back with him 
from Honolulu two years ago. He had served 
in the Governor’s house there, so of course, he 
feels this is entirely friendly condescension. I 
never cross him at all. Once I did discharge him 
because I wanted a maid, but he simply wouldn’t 


IN TAKESHI’S DOMAIN 


69 


go. He said he wanted to stay and take care of 
Uncle Thurlow. Said he thought he needed les- 
sons in Japanese art. Isn’t that comical?” 

There were lots of curious things in the house 
besides Takeshi, Polly found out. Cleo, a Great 
Dane, slept nearly all the time on a wolfskin be- 
side her master’s easel in the studio at the top of 
the house. And nestling between her big front 
paws Polly found a white Persian kitten with 
wide blue eyes and beautiful fur. 

“That is Wise’ums,” Mr. Abbott explained. 
“Descended from Bubasti, sacred cat of Thebes.” 

“Truly, Uncle Thurlow?” 

He laughed down at her like a big boy as he 
stood washing some watercolor brushes. 

“Certainly she is. Look over yonder at the 
clock and see if you can tell time as the orientals 
used to.” 

Over in a corner stood a tall clock case, carved 
from some rare sweet scented eastern wood, and 
inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Closed doors with 
carved peacocks on them shut in the round dial 
space. 

“That came from Burmah. Open the door 
and find the answer to all time servers.” 

Polly obeyed and opened the doors. Inside 


70 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


there was no dial at all, only an ivory tinted 
skull swinging from fine wires. 

“B-r-r-r, I don’t like that at all,” she shivered. 
“Don’t you think the ancients made altogether 
too much fuss over bones and skulls, Uncle Thur- 
low?” 

“Memento mores 3 Pollykins.” 

“But not with skulls. I like to remember 
death by the falling leaves and the flowers that 
go by with the seasons. I don’t think it’s right 
even to picture Death as a skeleton. We went 
up to Washington last winter to see the old mira- 
cle play, ‘Everyman,’ and it was quaint and in- 
teresting, but there was Death, all rattling bones, 
and playing a dirge on a little snare drum.” 

“Polly, you are a joy,” Aunt Millicent de- 
clared, laughing. “You’re even more of a house- 
hold diversion than Takeshi. What is your own 
particular version of the Dark Angel?” 

“Not at all dark,” Polly answered rather ear- 
nestly, sitting on a curved Roman chair with 
Wise’ums on her lap. “He must be the gentlest, 
strongest one of all the sons of light. Why don’t 
you paint a picture of him some day. Uncle, 
without a single bone visible?” 

“Perhaps I shall. One that will resemble the 


IN TAKESHI’S DOMAIN 


71 


Arabs’ conception of Azrael, he who conducts the 
spirit.” He lifted a large canvas and set it into 
a gold frame for her to see. “How is this mean- 
time?” 

“Polly will like that,” Aunt Millicent said. 
“I’m not sure that she won’t be hunting some like 
him up in the Helderbergs this summer.” 

It was the picture of a young faun perched 
lonesomely on an old red cairn. Desolation lay 
around, a widespread, barren wilderness, but 
overhead a delicate new moon shone in an amber 
and jade sky. The faun sat with relaxed limbs, 
resting his chin on both palms, elbows balanced 
on his tentlike knees, looking straight out at one 
with brooding, tantalizing eyes. 

“Wherever did you find him?” Polly cried. 
“What is he sitting on?” 

“A caim. Sounds Scotch, doesn’t it, but in 
the hill country north of the Campagna in Italy 
you come across these pagan burial mounds. I 
call him ‘The Last Faun.’ It was suggested by 
a couple of lines I read somewhere: 

“ ‘Sitteth by the red cairn, 

A brown one, a hoofed one/ 


You would like my Pippino.” 


72 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“Who is he?” 

“The model for this chap. Pippino brings us 
fresh vegetables and salads eveiy day from the 
Italian quarter below here just across the Square. 
Takeshi does our marketing and found him for 
us. He is a Roman boy about fifteen, I think, 
isn’t he, Milly? I know he helps support a fam- 
ily of six.” 

“What would Kate say to that, Polly?” Aunt 
Millicent asked, smilingly. “How she would 
scold about our modern conditions. She’d want 
to trot Pippino’s little sisters into some institu- 
tion and his mother out to work, and our own 
picturesque Pippino into a trade school.” 

“And they’d wither like flowers.” 

“What do they do now?” asked Polly. 

“Well, Angelo is a younger brother and he 
helps his mother manage a pushcart down on 
MacDougal Street. They do a rushing trade 
too. We’ll go and call on them before you go 
home. Maddelena and Carmela go to school 
and Tori just tumbles around under the pushcart 
all day and thrives mightily. Her name is Vit- 
toria. I named her myself for the noble lady that 
Michael Angelo loved, but they cut it down to 
Tori. And that makes me think, Polly, Pippino 


IN TAKESHI’S DOMAIN 73 

has promised to take us down to a marionette 
theatre while you are here.” 

Polly’s eyes sparkled. 

“Oh, it would be lots of fun. And we mustn’t 
forget to visit Mr. — what was his name? The 
old gentleman who was a boy with grandfather.” 

“Mr. Phelps. And go to all the sporting 
goods stores and camp outfitters. Pollykins, 
you’ll have to get up speed.” 

Polly smiled and looked around the great 
shadowy studio. It was so restful away up here 
at the top of the house. There were couches 
piled with cushions, and folios of sketches and 
rare engravings and photographs of works of art. 
Here was a teakwood table and a long seat be- 
fore it, inlaid heavily with mother-of-pearl. 
Over it hung a hideous Chang war mask, with a 
cherry satin mandarin coat beneath, embroidered 
with clambering gold dragons. 

From the beamed ceiling strange temple lamps 
depended from long chains, and a queer hand- 
wrought iron lantern swung from the end of a 
long pike that Dogberry might have carried in 
his rounds. 

Broad hanging shelves of weathered oak held 
all sorts of treasures. There were little squat 


74 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


jade images beside delicately veined Favrile 
glass from Bohemia. A Toltec idol of terra 
cotta lifted its head beside a line of ivory ele- 
phants coming over a curved Japanese bridge. 
Across one corner of the room was a screen from 
some Indian prince’s palace. Mr. Abbott told 
her it had been used to shut off the gallery of the 
women in the great banqueting hall from curious 
gazers. 

“I know,” Polly replied, “so that they could 
tiptoe out and peer between the carvings to see 
what was going on. It used to be the same in 
the old halls of the Norman barons too, only they 
didn’t have such close screens. How the girls 
would love to rummage in here !” 

A circular staircase wound down through the 
central part of the house. Polly’s room was on 
the second floor looking out on a tiny garden 
plot with a Japanese tea house on it. Two 
dwarf pines had been planted there and wistaria 
clambered over the arbor. The pines, Polly 
thought, looked like queer serpent forms all en- 
tangled, with their odd gnarled boughs. 

In her room there were no antiques, but white 
woodwork, and ivory colored willow furniture. 
There were apple-blossoms in the satiny wall- 


IN TAKESHI’S DOMAIN 75 

paper, and on the chintz cushions and couch cov- 
erings. 

“This is your nest for a week, girlie,” Aunt 
Millicent told her. “Takeshi will bring up your 
trunk when it comes. You don’t know how nice 
it seems to have a youngster around again.” 

“But I’m not one any more, am I?” Polly 
pleaded wistfully. “I’m sixteen.” 

“That’s only a kiddie. Since the boys grew 
up it has seemed rather lonely with just them and 
Thurlow and me. We need youth around us to 
keep us young, you know. No, you don’t know 
that yet, but you will some day. Youth and 
happiness are both contagious. We have so 
many young friends coming in all the time, and 
Thurlow likes it. He has a splendid crop of 
budding geniuses coming up. In the mountains 
he has a summer class that works in the open with 
him, and they are nearly all young students that 
he has taken under his wing and in whose success 
he believes.” 

“It’s half the battle when somebody believes 
you will be what you hope you will, isn’t it?” 
asked Polly. 

“Indeed it is. But dress for dinner now, 
pigeon,” said Aunt Milly with a light kiss on 


76 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


the brown hair. “Put on a pretty gown for I 
want this to be an evening that will be re- 
membered.” 


CHAPTER VII 


THE COMMISSARY SCOUT 

When dinner was served, Takeshi came out 
in the lower hall and struck lightly on a bronze 
dinner gong, four bells of varying size, each with 
its own mellow tone. 

Polly had paused for one last survey of her- 
self in the oval mirror with its gold rococo 
frame. She had put on her favorite dress; white 
it was, soft and fine, and simply made, such as 
Aunty Welcome had always loved to see her 
wear. Around her throat she wore a band of 
black velvet clasped with a quaint old pin of her 
grandmother’s, black enamel set around with 
pearls, and a tiny spray of them in the center. 

“If you behaves as good as you look, chile,” 
she told herself as Welcome used to do, “you’ll 
do credit to all mah bringin’ up and sufferin’.” 

As she was going down the staircase, she heard 
somebody speak her name from the floor above. 
It was Philip, twenty now, but the same curly 


78 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


haired, merry eyed boy she remembered. As 
Aunt Millicent said, he had inherited the Page 
eyes and dimples from her, and the curly hair 
from his father. 

“How do you do, Pollykins?” he said, catching 
up with her. “Why, you’re almost grown up, 
aren’t you?” 

He took both of her hands, and kissed her, and 
they went downstairs to where Jack and his 
father stood talking before the low fire in the 
wide hall. Jack was twenty- two, and Polly felt 
rather shy, remembering how she had sent th£se 
two big cousins little teasing messages whenever 
she had written to Aunt Millicent. 

“I never thought you’d be so tall, Jack,” she 
said, “or I wouldn’t have sent the box of mistle- 
toe at Christmas and the nuts.” 

“You wouldn’t, eh? Well, then, I’m mighty 
glad that nobody told you the awful truth.” 
Jack smiled down at her admiringly. This was 
a very charming little cousin to acquire all at 
once. 

They followed Mrs. Abbott and her husband 
into the dining-room, and Polly had to repress 
a startled “Oh!” at the surprise there. There 
was no tablecloth of linen, as they had at Glen- 


THE COMMISSARY SCOUT 79 

wood, but the richly polished wood was embel- 
lished by the delicately embroidered Japanese 
plate mats. In the center of the round table was 
a tiny garden of Nippon, with real water for a 
pond, and a miniature bridge. On the water, 
lilies bloomed “for real,” as Lucy Lee would say. 
There were curious little figures in boats and on 
islands here and there, with a few arbors scat- 
tered about, and the oblong Torii, arches that 
proclaim the approach to a temple or shrine in 
Japan. All about the circle of the garden stood 
candles in little green bronze frogs for candle- 
sticks. 

“You have everything so pretty, Aunt Milly,” 
Polly said happily. “Why, it’s like playing 
house.” 

“We like to play, and then it reminds Takeshi 
of home,” Uncle Thurlow said quite gravely, 
even though beside his chair stood Takeshi, smil- 
ing like a genial, ivory idol. “Wait until you 
come up to the castle and find us there in our 
summer togs! It will be quite different. Jack, 
as you boys aren’t going up for all summer, why 
not let Polly take your canoe? Can you manage 
one, Polly?” 

“I can swim,” Polly said eagerly. 


80 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“Well, that’s all that’s necessary,” Jack an- 
swered, laughing at her with the rest. “It’s 
quite easy to catch on to handling a paddle. 
You learned to sail the catboat at Lost Island 
all right. And if you can swim you won’t mind 
a tip over now and then. The lake there isn’t 
very deep.” 

“We all can swim, and I’d love to have the 
canoe if you’re sure you don’t want it.” 

“Then it’s a go. I wish we boys were going 
up to help rig up your tents.” 

“So do I, but still, it’s better perhaps that 
you’re not,” Polly added serenely. “You’d be a 
diversion, you know, and take up too much time 
altogether. Besides, we girls want to learn how 
to put up our own tents.” 

“How about driving tent poles?” asked Phil. 

“Well, I don’t know. I wonder why one 
couldn’t just choose two young trees that were 
the right distance apart, put a support across, 
and hang up one’s tent. Then you’ve got your 
tent poles rooted right in the ground so no storm 
can blow them over.” 

“I should think it might work all right. It 
takes you to think up new plans, doesn’t it, 
Pollykins?” 


THE COMMISSARY SCOUT 81 


“Aunt Milly,” Polly appealed, “please tell 
Phil he mustn’t call me Pollykins. It’s so 
childish and I’m really almost grown up 
now.” 

“Almost,” teased Phil. 

“No scrapping, children,” Aunt Millicent in- 
tervened. “How about firearms? You’re not 
taking any, are you, Polly? I shouldn’t.” 

“We didn’t plan to, but how about snakes?” 

“Phil shot a snake over my head one day up 
there,” Jack said. “Remember, Phil? It was 
down in our tent near the shore and I was asleep 
on a couch inside the tent. We had some shelves 
of canvas we had rigged up behind the couch, and 
first thing I knew I heard Phil tell me to lie 
perfectly still. Then he shot. It was a snake 
curled up behind me on the shelf, with his head 
hanging down. We’d killed one that morning 
and I guess this was its mate. Any way, this 
little brother of William Tell shot it.” 

“It wasn’t poisonous,” Phil added modestly. 
“Just a black snake, only sometimes if they’re 
angry they’ll whip out at you and might snap 
around your arm or neck. Though they would 
not harm you.” 

“Oh, I don’t like that,” Polly said. “We 


82 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


won’t kill any mates in the first place. Any 
more things to warn me against?” 

“Don’t get lost in the caves,” cautioned J ack. 
“There are a lot in the mountains up there that 
have never even been explored. No one knows 
how deep they extend underground.” 

“With those beautiful crystal icicles hanging 
all around; stalactites, don’t you call them?” 
Polly leaned forward, all animation. “Oh, we 
saw such wonderful ones at the Luray Caverns 
and the Weyer Caves last year in northern Vir- 
ginia.” 

“These haven’t any crystal decorations, but 
you may find remains there of prehistoric races 
and animals. You found some bones, didn’t 
you, Father?” 

“Don’t let them tease you, Polly,” Aunt Mil- 
licent said. “There are plenty of caves, but the 
only prehistoric relic I ever saw was an old horse 
skull that Phil took down there and hid for his 
father to find and exult over.” 

“And there’s a woman hermit on top of old 
Baldy Crest. You want to visit her,” Jack in- 
sisted. “Her name is Sarepta Jones. Dad 
painted a picture of her gathering wood, and it 
looks just like one of the witches from Macbeth.” 


THE COMMISSARY SCOUT 83 


Before dinner was over Polly felt as if she had 
made a start towards all the summer’s fun. The 
two cousins knew every place of interest around 
Montalban, and just the way to run a camp. 
They helped her make out her prospective list of 
camp supplies, and advised her as to the best 
places at which to buy. 

“You don’t have to carry all your food sup- 
plies with you. Make out a weekly list and send 
down either to one of the city stores, or to the 
village, and they’ll send it out parcels post. 
Then you’re sure of getting fresh goods. If 
there’s anything else we can help out with, send 
out a long call for help, and we’ll come run- 
ning.” 

“It’s awfully kind of you, Jack,” Polly said. 
“I may have to before I get through.” 

The next day they got an early start, Aunt 
Millicent and herself, and went on a cruise 
through the stores. Polly was enthusiastic over 
the camp outfits. Each one seemed just a little 
better than the last, she declared, and how on 
earth was she to know which one was best? 

“Take the one that combines simplicity and 
lightness with comfort,” advised Aunt Millicent. 
“You want tents that you can be sure won’t give 


84 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


out in a storm. I’m not sure but what Doctor 
Elliott’s advice isn’t best about them, and you’d 
better try the government supply stores where 
you can pick up a good second hand tent.” 

“I want three medium sized ones,” Polly said, 
“not over fifteen dollars each. That’s all we can 
pay.” 

“You can get them for that. Then you want 
cots. The canvas ones are all right if you have 
soft blankets underneath.” 

“How about sleeping bags that you stuff with 
leaves or pine needles?” asked Polly wisely. 

“No, dear heart, not to sleep on. You sleep 
inside your sleeping bags, and if you want to 
stuff anything with pine needles, choose a 
poncho, I should think.” 

“But they’re not bags, are they, Aunt Milly?” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Aunt Millicent laughed. 
“I shall have to send the boys out with you. Get 
all the catalogues and they can mark the best 
things to look at.” 

This seemed a good plan, so Polly returned 
laden with catalogues, and even Takeshi was ap- 
pealed to about their contents. 

“Takeshi knows how to reduce food to its low- 
est common denominator,” Phil said. “He can 


THE COMMISSARY SCOUT 85 


pack the most food in the smallest compass of 
any one I ever saw.” 

The next day Pippino was introduced. He 
was out in the garden with Takeshi, bargaining 
over vegetables, and Polly thought it was like a 
scene from a foreign country instead of prosaic 
New York. Takeshi, when he was at his morn- 
ing duties, wore a native gown of dark gray 
cotton, embroidered in blue. Pippino was hat- 
less, his shirt open at his tanned throat, and a 
scarlet scarf knotted loosely under the collar. 

“Ah, you see de picture de Signor paint of 
me?” he asked, flashing a smile at Polly that 
showed his white even teeth and gleaming dark 
eyes. “I make ver’ fine boy, yes? You come 
down some day where I live. See Angelo, my 
big little brother. He ver’ much more handsome 
than me.” 

“Isn’t he a dear?” Polly exclaimed. “Did he 
say when he’d take us to the marionettes?” 

“The last night you are here. I want you to 
finish all of your shopping first, then you may 
play, young lady. You must telephone to the 
Doctor’s office, and see if he and Kate are back 
yet. We shall want to visit the kiddie clinic.” 

Polly telephoned and found that they were ex- 


86 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


pected back the following day, so it was arranged 
that the shopping should be concluded by then, 
that the remainder of the visit might be devoted 
to amusement. 


CHAPTER VIII 

kate’s kiddie clinic 

It was a wonderful week to Polly, not only, 
as she wrote home to the girls, from the stand- 
point of novelty and adventure, but because she 
learned so much of conditions she had never even 
guessed at before. 

“I knew about sick babies and poor people, of 
course, before we went to Kate’s kiddie clinic,” 
she wrote to Ruth, who was older than the others, 
and would understand better. “Everyone does. 
As Grandfather likes to quote, ‘the poor ye have 
with you always,’ until you get so used to seeing 
them suffer that you don’t mind it any more. 
But here in the city, Ruth, it isn’t one or two or 
ten families, like we have at home down in the 
Hollow, but it’s hundreds and thousands. Kate 
says you have to shut your eyes to the sea of 
them, and think only of the circle right around 
your own self which you are able to reach and 
help. Just the minute you begin figuring out 


88 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


how to help everyone, you feel like the clock that 
thought how many times it must tick in a year, 
so it got discouraged and stopped short. I guess 
we have to keep on ticking if we ever expect to 
help very much.” 

The evening before they visited the clinic, Kate 
and the Doctor had invited Mr. and Mrs. Ab- 
bott and the boys to dine with them in Polly’s 
honor at their little studio apartment down on 
Stanton Street. It was on the East Side near 
the Williamsburg Bridge. As they turned into 
the crosstown approach, Polly could see the beau- 
tiful shadowy outline of the great stone arches 
looming up into the sky, the long cables outlined 
against the night with myriads of electric lights. 

“It looks like a great diamond necklace,” she 
said. “Or, no! I know, Uncle Thurlow, like 
the Bridge of Souls I’ve read of somewhere, in 
Japan, isn’t it?” 

“You’re quite as sentimental as your Aunt 
Milly,” Mr. Abbott asserted. “Takeshi and I 
have a hard time keeping her away from this part 
of town. She knows every little old curio and 
antique shop from Cooper Square to East 
Broadway.” 

“Oh, but Polly would like the Russian quar- 


KATE’S KIDDIE CLINIC 


89 


ter,” Aunt Milly said. “I found one tiny shop 
under the shadow of the elevated on Allen Street, 
where they sold seven-branched candlesticks, 
braziers, and hammered copper bowls. You 
would have loved them, girlie. I thought of 
course they were all antiques until I found two 
barrels out in the little court-yard filled with 
earth. Then the little Russian girl told me her 
father used them to bury away his new goods in, 
so as to make them look old, because the Ameri- 
cans are so strange. They like all their copper 
and brass very green and old looking.” 

“I wouldn’t have cared,” Polly said valiantly. 
“They’ll all be old some time. Why not start 
your great-great-great-grandchildren’s antiques 
for them?” 

They found Kate and her Doctor in a new-law 
apartment house on the corner of Grand Street. 
Once inside their door, all the outer world seemed 
blotted out as if by magic. As Kate said hap- 
pily, it was their own private island. There 
were five rooms and a kitchenette, where Polly 
and Mrs. Abbott helped Kate with dinner, al- 
though it was so tiny in its spick-spanness that 
there was barely room for more than one to turn 
around in it. 


90 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“It’s just a baby kitchen,” Polly exclaimed, 
poking about curiously. Everything had been 
planned for artful concealment. There were 
rows of deep drawers underneath the shelves sur- 
rounding the room on two sides, with glass doors 
enclosing the shelves. Kate cooked with elec- 
tricity, a process which simplified even this phase 
of the culinary duties, and when Polly saw all 
of the shining contrivances, she declared that 
she wanted wires run out to the camp for the 
summer. 

“I don’t see why electricity should be so ex- 
clusive. Perhaps some day we’ll all carry handy 
pocket batteries and a coil of wire to hitch it to 
any lightning rod we find convenient.” 

“Takeshi would enjoy that,” Mr. Abbott said 
genially. “I’ve found out that Polly and Take- 
shi belong in the same category, and I’m not so 
sure but what Mrs. Elliott does also. You’re all 
looking for labor saving devices, and it is wrong. 
Labor is sweet and handicraft is the most satis- 
fying of man’s creative efforts.” 

“Oh, but it’s so much nicer to be able to turn 
the switch, and catch the current, isn’t it, Kate?” 
Polly protested. 

Kate called that she must refuse to argue, 


KATE’S KIDDIE CLINIC 


91 


much as she wished to, as it would certainly spoil 
the gravy if she did. 

“And there you have the triumph of handi- 
work again,” cried Uncle Thurlow. “How 
could any pressing of a button produce gravy 
such as this.” He peered over Polly’s shoulder 
into the cook’s domain. “It takes real art and 
the touch of the knowing hand, doesn’t it, Polly- 
kins?” 

“Here, child,” Aunt Milly handed him the 
heaped-up platter of fried chicken. “Carry this 
in and hush your talk. Kate’s giving us a Vir- 
ginia dinner : fried chicken, roast ham, sweet po- 
tatoes, and goodness knows what all. It makes 
me hungry just watching her fix it up.” 

After dinner was over, they sat around the 
large mission table in the glow from a squat Rus- 
sian copper lamp, the light twinkling through its 
shade of perforated copper in curious patterns. 

Out of doors it was warm and springlike. 
Kate had opened the windows wide, and Polly 
and she sat on the broad window-seat, looking 
down at the great pulsing city, crowded to over- 
flowing with humanity. They were on the 
eighth floor. Eastward lay the East River, and 
below them lighted streets threaded paths 


92 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 

through the darkness. On the corner below 
them a street piano poured out its flood of rip- 
pling melody. 

“Isn’t it all wonderful?” Kate said softly, lean- 
ing her chin on her hands. “You know when I 
first came north, Polly, I was afraid of it. But 
after a time I got acquainted with it, and it be- 
came a great brooding mother to me. Some- 
times it tramples down its young the way the 
animals do, and even devours them, but still it is 
a mother. Our clinic is just below here, near 
the settlement. You are coming to visit it in 
the morning. It is only a store that we have 
rented and fitted up, but it does very well. 
Each new clinic that is started in districts like 
this is a center of healing and helpfulness, and 
good always spreads faster than evil if you give 
it half a chance.” 

At nine o’clock the following morning, Polly 
and Mrs. Abbott were promptly on hand outside 
the clinic. They had found the place easily, as 
Polly said, because it looked so clean. Outside 
the whole street looked old and weary. Open 
basements yawned like hungry mouths, filled 
with old clothes, second-hand furniture, fruits, 
vegetables, and babies, — babies of all sorts and 


KATE’S KIDDIE CLINIC 


93 


sizes, — the weariest, wisest looking babies that 
Polly had ever seen. 

Inside the building everything was spotless. 
White paint and white tiling had worked won- 
ders, and two white-clad nurses were in attend- 
ance, besides Kate and the Doctor. Although 
it was so early, there were many waiting mothers 
in line, each with her burden in her arms and 
most of them with several children clinging to 
their skirts besides. 

“Oh, dear,” said Polly wistfully, “babies 
should be the most precious things in the world, 
and here they can’t be precious because there are 
so many. They can’t all find room, can they?” 

The Doctor smiled at her, — his kind, all-know- 
ing, patient smile, — as he sat down at his desk 
and reached for his report blanks. 

“One philosopher has called them the ‘much- 
too-many.’ We are just beginning to realize 
they are the most precious things in the world, 
just beginning, Miss Polly.” 

“Polly, I do want you to see Bennie’s baby,” 
Kate said just then. A little chap of about ten 
had edged his way into the long white sunlit 
room, and had seated himself on a bench near 
the door with a baby on his knees. He handled 


94 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


her in motherly fashion, too, waiting his turn 
cheerfully. 

“We’re going to take him and the baby, too, 
up to the camp with us for the summer. His 
mother does day work, cleaning and scrubbing, 
so it’s up to Bennie to look after the baby, and 
when she seemed sick, he just trotted her down 
here to us to make her well. That’s what they 
all say when they come to us, and it’s so pitiful 
sometimes. ‘Please make my sick baby well.’ 
Sometimes it seems almost hopeless, but we feel 
that with every baby saved we have won a new 
victory.” 

Polly nodded her head in silence, watching 
Doctor Elliott at his work; the delicate patience 
that guided his questioning of each scared-eyed 
mother, the way he handled the frail ailing ones 
with strong, skillful hands. As fast as one 
mother left the chair beside his desk, another 
took her place, all through the long morning. 

“Sometimes we have as many as sixty here,” 
Kate told her. “You see, one woman tells an- 
other one, and so they keep on coming to us. 
Don’t you think it’s a big work, Polly? I love 
it. Yet some of the women that I have talked 
with say they think it such a useless work, that 


KATE’S KIDDIE CLINIC 


95 


nature is always over prodigal, and even with her 
humanlings sends out too many, so there will be 
plenty left after death and disease wipe out the 
weaklings. Why, this way one feels almost a 
partnership with God in healing and making the 
crooked straight.” 

“You’re a dear, Kitty Katherine,” Polly said 
warmly, squeezing her hand in hers. “You’re a 
dear, and so is your Doctor boy. We girls want 
to help all we can this summer and we will too. 
If Bennie can cuddle a sick baby and look after 
it, I guess we can.” 

“But we need so much more money. When I 
think how few we shall be able to take up with 
us to Montalban compared with those left be- 
hind, it makes my heart ache. If we only had 
a few thousands to do with, even a few hundreds. 
'Why, Polly,” Kate laughed and bit her lip, hesi- 
tating before she went on, “sometimes I am 
ashamed of myself. Bob took me to the opera 
not long ago — I had been longing to hear ‘La 
Boheme’ — and I saw one woman who wore a 
tiara of diamonds with a stone in the center that 
is said to be worth $200,000. Don’t tell even 
Mrs. Abbott, but I simply longed to snatch it for 
my sick babies.” 


96 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“Don’t listen to her,” Doctor Elliott turned 
his head to protest smilingly. “She’s fearfully 
radical since I married her and let her help me.” 

There came a lull in the work, and he stood 
near them watching the weighing of a little Ital- 
ian bambino. 

“Fine! Gained eight ounces,” he announced. 
“Kate was certain two weeks ago that I had bet- 
ter send it to a hospital. Wait until we get him 
up to the mountains; eh, Nedda?” 

Nedda, the young girl with the baby, smiled 
back shyly, her dark eyes full of gratefulness. 
She gathered her blanket wrapped baby close 
against her heart and hurried over to a corner to 
dress it. 

“She is only sixteen,” Kate told them. “She 
doesn’t belong in our district, but Pippino’s 
mother sent her over to us. You see how good 
news spreads. After you visited us at Oakleigh, 
you must have written home to Mr. Abbott — ” 

“I did,” exclaimed Milly. “I told him all 
about your work and the Doctor’s, and where 
the clinic was. Pippino was posing for him, and 
he must have talked to him of it.” 

“ ‘A bird of the air shall carry the matter,’ 
quoted the Doctor. “And from so small a be- 


KATE S KIDDIE CLINIC 


97 , 


ginning we save Nedda’s baby for her, and he 
will summer up in the mountains. She is to help 
with the cooking, too, to earn a little extra 
money.” 

“You know, Aunt Milly,” Polly said when 
they were on their way homeward at noon time, 
“I never used to worry about what the rest of the 
world beyond Queen’s Landing was doing, and 
now I feel interested in every single blessed thing. 
Why is it?” 

“Getting older and wiser, Polly. What are 
you planning now? Something nearer to ‘the 
Heart’s desire’?” 

“I don’t quite know myself,” answered Polly. 
“You see, I’m only beginning to plan, but I do 
so much want to help Kate with her work. I 
wish I had lots of money to hand over to her 
instead of just the little nest egg we girls have 
been able to save.” 

“Why don’t you speak to Mr. Phelps about it? 
It couldn’t do any harm, and he is always inter- 
ested in helping people. I don’t know which is 
worse, to have the money and not know what to 
do with it, or not to have the money and still see 
forty different ways in which it would do good.” 

“Let’s go and see him this afternoon,” Polly 


98 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


proposed eagerly, her eyes sparkling as they al- 
ways did when she had struck a fresh line of 
action. “Please, Aunt Milly, right now while 
I’m full of it all. The idea of any money lying 
idle as long as there’s a hungry child in the world, 
or a hungry mother either! Maybe they’re not 
all hungry, but I’ll bet a cookie if they’d always 
had enough to eat they wouldn’t get sick so 
easily.’’ 

Mrs. Abbott shook her head. “Not today. 
We are going to see him Friday evening. Thur- 
low telephoned to him this morning, and made 
the arrangement, so we must keep it. Think and 
plan. Remember everything that ever happened 
started with somebody’s thinking about it. 
We’re going to lunch at a little Italian restau- 
rant I know, and go home by way of Spring 
Street, and up McDougal, so that you can see 
Pippino’s family in all their springtime glory.” 


CHAPTER IX 

PIPPINO’s FAMILY 

They crossed from the East Side into the Ital- 
ian quarter where, as Aunt Milly said, nearly 
every block represented a separate province of 
the homeland. The streets were full of bright 
colors, pushcart flower vendors, women and chil- 
dren with dashes of brilliant colors in their cloth- 
ing. Even the people themselves looked happier, 
Polly thought, than on the East Side. 

“They come from the land where every child 
is born with a song on its lips instead of a cry,” 
Aunt Milly said, stepping over a dusky-haired, 
big-eyed toddler flat down on the sidewalk. 
“Isn’t that a beautiful old-world church on the 
corner? I love its flagged court-yard and broad 
steps fairly alive with children. We should 
have our churches like that on week days, not 
closed and full of dusty lonesomeness. See that 
girl yonder, dancing and spinning her tambourine 
in the air.” 

They stood for a few minutes on the curb 


100 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


watching a slim, olive-skinned girl dancing in the 
street, while a smiling old woman played a street 
piano for her. The children gathered thickly 
around, laughing and swaying to the music. 

“This seems better than over among the Rus- 
sians and Hebrews,” said Polly. “I should 
think that Kate would rather have the clinic over 
here. Her people look so sad and worn out.” 

“But that’s where help is needed most, girlie. 
Maybe we’d look sad and worn out too if we’d 
been stepped on for centuries. That is Prince 
Street yonder, where we are going to the mari- 
onette theatre Saturday night. After that it’s 
home again for you, Pollykins.” 

“Oh, and I’ve had such a splendid time, Aunt 
Milly! It was dear of you and Uncle Thurlow 
to bring me up here and just spin me around 
from one thing to another. I’ll never forget it, 
and somehow it has started me to thinking along 
all sorts of new channels. You’d call them that, 
I guess. Ruth says when you really begin to 
learn things your brain cells start popping like 
popcorn. Is that so?” 

Aunt Milly laughed. “I’m sure I don’t know. 
Ask Mr. Phelps. He likes all sorts of new prob- 
lems and ideas.” 



A Slim, Olive Skinned Girl Dancing in the Street 




PIPPINO’S FAMILY 


101 


“I only hope that he’ll like me, so I can talk 
to him about those sick kiddies,” Polly said, 
laughing. 

With that they reached the restaurant, and 
turned into an open basement door. This led 
through a long hall and out into a back yard. 
As they passed the kitchen, the Italian cook, in 
a tall white cap, turned around from the big 
stove and smiled at them, waving a spoon in sa- 
lute. A pretty dark-haired woman, whom Aunt 
Milly called Madame, gave them seats at a little 
round green table in the yard, between two rows 
of small lemon and orange trees planted in green 
tubs. Vines were bursting into leaf on the per- 
gola overhead and on each table stood a little jar 
of jonquils. 

Polly was delighted at the unexpectedness of 
it all. The little square back yard was turned 
into a bower, and two stories up the clothes lines 
swaying with their commonplace burden seemed 
like huge winged birds. 

The lunch was deliciously cooked and deli- 
cately served; broth first, then a bit of baked 
bluefish, pot au feu salad, ice cream, and cafe 
noir. A big black cat with jade green eyes ram- 
bled down from the open gallery, and seated 


102 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


itself beside them as they ate, turning its head 
from side to side as if it felt responsible for the 
hospitality of the place. 

“The boys and I come here in the evenings 
sometimes,” said Aunt Milly, reaching for one 
of the long thin breadsticks. “Your uncle 
doesn’t like foreign cooking. You know, it’s all 
a funny mistake, Polly, thinking that such places 
are for artists or the real art crowd. They are 
not at all. Artists — and Takeshi and I know 
this to be true — artists love to be fed on planked 
steaks, roasts, and all sorts of solid food, — square 
meals, as Jack says.” 

“I think myself as Stoney does about raspber- 
ries,” Polly declared. “When Mandy asked 
him which he liked best, red ones or white ones, 
he had his mouth full and told her ‘Bofe are best.’ 
I think I’d like this sort of thing sometimes, and 
sometimes the other.” 

After lunch was over, they crossed town to 
MacDougal Street and slowly walked up it to- 
wards Washington Square, until they came to 
Pippino’s mother. On both sides, the street was 
lined with pushcarts, but there was no pushing 
or crowding in the little street market. Every- 
one seemed to be happy and leisurely; as Polly 


PIPPINO’S FAMILY 


103 


remarked, it was nice of them all to look that 
way whether they felt it or not. 

Signora Fanchetti sat beside her pushcart cro- 
cheting lace, nodding and smiling as she counted 
her chain before rising to greet her guests. She 
was large and rosy-cheeked, with soft black 
glossy hair and dark eyes like Pippino himself. 
Delightedly, she showed Polly all her wares. 
Strings of red peppers and reed hoops of dried 
figs were hung on a string overhead. On the 
cart itself lay bolts of handmade lace and gayly 
colored ribbons, little gilded images of the saints, 
and colored candles for festas. Down at one 
side was a tall brown crock filled with sweet 
pickled limes. 

Tori was rescued from her favorite play- 
ground under the cart and smiled obligingly at 
Polly, her face half hidden in her mother’s red 
apron. 

“She vera bad child,” said the Signora pleas- 
antly. “Twice she have run from me to follow 
after street piano, two times already. Pippino 
say to tie her to pushcart. All the time mos’ she 
is dancing and dancing too mucha.” 

“Don’t say that, please, Mrs. Fanchetti,” 
pleaded Aunt Milly cheerily. “Children can’t 


104 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


dance too much, can they? It’s just like telling 
the flowers they must not lift up their faces to 
the sun. Wait till you get her up in the moun- 
tains with us next summer! You know, Polly, 
we are going to have Pippino up for one of the 
summer class models, so the entire family will be 
with us for a week. We’ve promised them 
Phil’s tent and you will see them all.” 

“Oh, you mucha too good to my Pippino,” 
the Signora cried, her big, soft eyes shining with 
quick tears. “He say Maddelena, too, must be 
in the great Signor’s pictures, one little Roman 
melon seller.” 

“Won’t she be dear?” Aunt Milly replied. 
Then, as they went away up the street towards 
the Square, she added, “Maddelena is so pretty. 
Thurlow is going to paint her with bare feet and 
a little blue skirt and white waist, with her thick 
brown curls around her face, holding up the gold 
meshed melons to sell in the old fountain square 
in Rome.” 

“I do wish,” Polly exclaimed ardently, “that 
Ted and Peggie could study art. Peggie loves 
to model, and Ted can draw. If she were only 
going up with us ! But she isn’t. She’d love it 
so much, and I know she wants to be some kind 


PIPPINO’S FAMILY 


105 


of an artist when she’s grown up. She’s got it 
all in her, the talent, and the enthusiasm, and the 
love of it.” 

“Has she patience too? She will need that 
most of all to succeed.” 

“Maybe not. Not so much as Peggie has. 
Peggie can model beautifully, Aunt Milly, all in 
miniature, you know. She did our heads in has 
relief this last winter, and you can actually tell 
us apart. Ted tried to sketch us, just dashed 
off little studies, you know, and you could hardly 
tell one from another.” 

“I don’t doubt it one bit,” said Aunt Milly, 
mischievously. “I’ve been to some art exhibi- 
tions with your uncle where I had the same trou- 
ble, but don’t tell him or Takeshi that I said so. 
Takeshi doesn’t think that I appreciate true art 
anyway, ever since I banished some Japanese 
prints from the library to the studio. I like their 
lovely orange and violet sunsets, but not the 
spoon faced ladies with the long finger nails. 
Now, it’s homeward bound for us,” as they came 
to the Square, “and tonight you must rest.” 


CHAPTER X 


THE LONELY KING 

Polly wrote long letters back to Glenwood 
and to the girls that evening, seated at the little 
colonial writing desk in her room. 

Wise’ums had formally adopted her, and these 
days was usually curled up on the white rug be- 
fore the dresser instead of between Cleo’s big 
paws. 

Letters had come from Natalie and Sue, both 
enclosing additional items which the girls had for- 
gotten to include in the camp outfit list. 

“ ‘Lentils, dates, peanut butter, and all other 
nutritious food of the desert,’ ” Polly read aloud 
from Sue’s letter. “ ‘See authentic accounts at 
the public library.’ If that isn’t Susan all over, 
Aunt Milly ! And N at says to be sure not to for- 
get several hammocks. She throws back my own 
saying at me, about resting and inviting your 
soul. We’ll not have much time for hammocks, 
I’m thinking.” 


THE LONELY KING 


107 


“Oh, yes, you will. You have no idea how all 
this energy will slip off your shoulders once you 
get up into the pines and relax. We’ll order a 
good canvas hammock with a wind shield and 
padding, and you can draw lots to see which one 
shall occupy it at stated intervals.” 

“I’ve just written to Ruth that it seems best 
to divide the things into those which can be 
shipped directly from here to Montalban, and 
those which we girls will need to have down home, 
like our shoes, suits, and so on. It isn’t going 
to cost so much after all, and Nat says they have 
given a spring social this week, clearing — let’s 
see,” she referred to the letter beside her, “oh, 
yeS, twelve dollars and fifty cents. And next 
week Ruth’s going to have a colonial tea at her 
house, in costume. We give some sort of affair 
each week to clear up a little money, even if it’s 
only a candy pull at school at ten cents each. It 
all counts up. I think two hundred dollars will 
nearly see us through this year, with what we can 
earn from Kate, and we want to hand over a clear 
hundred to her if we’re able.” 

“Tents are a big item of expense.” 

“I know, but if I do as the boys suggested and 
buy the second-hand army tents, they won’t be 


108 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


so much. We’ll need three sleeping tents, one 
shelter tent where we can do our cooking, and a 
long plank table. Isn’t there a handy boy up 
there to put things together for us. Aunt Milly? 
Somebody that you know?” 

“There’s Flickers, if he wouldn’t be too shy. 
Your uncle hires him to keep the oil stoves 
cleaned and filled. That may seem comical, but 
it takes time and patience just the same. His 
real name is Will Jones, but we call him Flick- 
ers, he’s so uncertain. You make all possible 
arrangements with him to come and work the 
following day, and he seems delighted. Then he 
vanishes for about a week and turns up unex- 
pectedly some day to ask whether we don’t want 
something done.” 

“Why not hobble him the way they do ponies 
out West when you don’t want him to get away 
from you?” Polly’s dimples showed mischie- 
vously. “I think we’ll find a way to make him 
work. I’ll put Flickers down as part of the 
camp equipment, anyway.” 

The next day they made a final round of the 
shops, and prepared for the visit to Mr. Phelps 
in the evening. He lived uptown near Central 
Park in an old brownstone house somewhat out 


THE LONELY KING 


109 


of date among its neighbors of the French Re- 
naissance. It was squarely built with little bal- 
conies outside the lower story windows, and 
covered over with ivy. 

Friday evening was one of Mr. Phelps’s at- 
home nights, and Polly never forgot the first 
glimpse she had of him, standing between the two 
long library windows, talking to a young girl 
with a spray of peach blossoms tucked in her 
bodice. He was very tall, with long white curly 
hair, and the most contented face imaginable. 
His complexion was as pink as a child’s, and his 
eyes were dark blue. There was something more 
than mere contentment in his face, and in the 
expression of the sightless eyes. 

“I couldn’t just catch it at first,” Polly said 
later, during the drive home to Twelfth Street, 
“but now I know what it is. It’s compassion and 
understanding of all the world’s troubles. Re- 
member, Uncle Thurlow, the old king in Tippa 
Passes,’ the one who sat in the sun judging the 
people?” 

Mr. Abbott smiled and nodded his head, his 
eyes half closed as he looked out at the newly 
leaved trees of the Avenue. He quoted softly, 
half under his breath: 


110 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 

“The gods so loved him as he dreamed. 

That, having lived this long, it seemed 
No need the king should ever die.” 

“That’s the one,” cried Polly. “He was a 
wonderful old king. I think Mr. Phelps would 
look just like him if he had a wreath of holly or 
mistletoe in his hair. Maybe I’ll send him some 
for Christmas. And it doesn’t seem as though 
he were blind when his eyes are wide open and 
he looks right at you as if he could see you. He 
laid his hand on my head to find out how tall I 
was, and it felt like a benediction.” 

During a lull between the coming and going 
of guests, Mr. Phelps talked with Polly and lis- 
tened while she eagerly unfolded her plans for 
the summer. 

“I don’t know anyone excepting you and 
Grandfather who would take an interest in it 
as we girls have planned it,” she told him ear- 
nestly. “I’m sure he will help me because he 
always does, but we shall need more. I mean 
Doctor Elliott will. It seems as if we were in 
partnership with him, now that he is willing to 
let us help him.” 

“Then I must help too,” Mr. Phelps answered 
cordially. “I don’t know much about it, but I’m 


THE LONELY KING 


111 


not going to let Admiral Bob Page get ahead of 
me. How much do you charge per orphan, Miss 
Polly?” 

“They’re not orphans at all. They’re mothers 
with sick children.” 

He laughed down at her like a tall, white 
haired boy. “To be sure they are. I always 
leaned to orphans myself. They’re very forlorn, 
orphans, if you’ve ever noticed. Tell your Doc- 
tor to come and visit me soon and tell me more 
about his clinic. Tell him that I will help him. 
Perhaps I will even come up to Montalban my- 
self this summer and visit at the Castle, so I shall 
see you all there. I used to go every year.” 

Polly remembered what Mrs. Abbott had told 
her while they were at Glenwood about young 
Lindsay Phelps, the artist friend of Uncle Thur- 
low’s, who had built the castle and then suddenly 
gone away. She wished that she might ask about 
him then and there, why he had gone away in 
the first place, and why he had never come back. 
This kingly old gentleman did not look at all 
stern or quarrelsome. 

She was thinking of all this while Mr. Phelps 
told her of the merry days at college when the 
Admiral and he had been chums, and suddenly 


112 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


she caught sight of a portrait hanging above the 
bookcase close to where they stood. It was the 
head of a boy. In some way he made her think 
of Pippino, with his dark curly hair and bright 
young face, full of boyish eagerness. 

“Isn’t that a nice face?” she exclaimed softly. 
“It looks like one in Uncle Thur low’s studio, a 
boy with a violin. I forget whether the artist 
was Franz Hals or Leonardo Da Vinci. I don’t 
know about the different schools, yet, you see, 
but it’s just such a boy and such a face.” 

Mr. Phelps looked up at the picture too, and 
his fine old face softened with tenderness. 

“Thur low painted that for me some years ago. 
It is a portrait of my son, Lindsay.” It seemed 
as if his eyes must be able to see the face. “They 
tell me that it is very like him ; though, of course, 
he is grown to manhood now. Perhaps he will 
come back this summer. ITe used to be very 
fond of Montalban, where you are going.” 

“Has he gone very far away?” Polly dared to 
ask gently. 

“The last time I heard from him he was in 
Italy, at Ravenna where Dante spent his exile, 
but he will surely come back when he has found 
that for which he is seeking.” 


THE LONELY KING 


113 


She did not ask any more questions. For 
some reason she could not, not with that old 
sightless face before her, full of love and faith. 
But later, after they had reached home and she 
sat for a while as usual before Mrs. Abbott’s 
open fire, she referred to their talk. 

“Do you know what it is that Lindsay Phelps 
is seeking. Aunt Milly?” 

Aunt Milly was combing out her long fair 
hair and braiding it, seated before the little oval 
mirror of the dressing table. 

“Bless me, Polly, what next?” she answered. 
“How should I know? In fact I thought that 
he had disappeared indefinitely. Does his father 
know where he is?” 

“The last time he heard, he was in Ravenna, 
Italy.” 

“And you found that much out, you little 
witch, when he never tells us a thing about Lind- 
say, not a single thing. I must tell Thurlow, for 
he loves the boy. It’s a mystery, his going away 
from the city, and never showing up again ; two 
years it is now. And Mr. Phelps is always silent 
about him when we know he loved him dearly.” 

“I like his face in the picture,” Polly said 
thoughtfully. “I think I like it better than any 


114 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


face I ever saw. I mean, of course, a face not in 
our family,” very sedately. 

“Pollykins, you’re romancing.” 

“No, I’m not, truly, Aunt Milly. I do hope 
that he comes back safely some day, after he has 
found” — she repeated Mr. Phelps’s words dream- 
ily — “that which he is seeking.” 


CHAPTER XI 


A CLUE FROM ITALY 

“Only one more day,” Jack said dolefully, 
when they assembled for breakfast the following 
morning. “Won’t you be sorry, Polly, not to 
hear Takeshi’s welcome signal on the old gong?” 

“Indeed, I will. I wish we had a big one for 
the camp, something for Crullers to hit every 
morning, like a bass drum, you know. Are you 
going with us tonight?” 

“We are,” Phil answered for him. “We like 
the marionettes, too. We often go with mother 
to see them.” He stood behind his mother’s 
chair holding it back for her, and smiling down 
from his height of five feet, eleven inches, at the 
little mother. “Isn’t she a dear roly poly sort 
of a mother to have, Polly?” 

“Don’t pay the slightest attention to him, 
Polly,” Aunt Milly protested. “He adores the 
marionettes and comes home spouting Childe 
Roland by the yard. I don’t know which end 


116 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 

of the story we’ll hear tonight, but you know it 
is rather like the plays they have at the Chinese 
theatres. They run a narrative play through 
consecutive nights for a week at a time, all 
scenes woven about the adventures and exploits 
of a certain hero. Childe Roland is the favorite, 
or Orlando, as they call him. He and Charle- 
magne fight the Saracens, and he wins the love 
of Blanchefleur, or is her name Blanchemains? 
I forget which now. It is the quaintest little 
theatre, up four flights of stairs, and they treat 
you as if they were giving a performance by 
royal command.” 

Polly was fairly a-tiptoe with anticipation 
when evening came, and they started downtown. 
Walking across Washington Square to the car, 
she looked around her, sniffing the air happily. 

“Do you know I’ve grown to love it all; the 
old Square and the trees and the fountain, even 
the funny little bambinos tumbling around. 
Just see that wisp of a new moon, Aunt Milly, 
behind the gold cross on the Memorial Church, 
and the evening star so close to it. Everything 
seems to tremble with springtime down here. 
See that boy resting at the edge of the fountain, 
the one with the basket of images. Isn’t he a 


A CLUE FROM ITALY 


117 


real picture? I didn’t know New York had such 
beautiful quiet old places. I thought it was all 
new.” 

They found a little outpost sentry at the lower 
entrance to the marionette theatre. He was 
about eight years old, with big black eyes, and a 
curiously wise little face. Colombo, he said his 
name was, standing very straight, — Colombo 
Palesi. 

“From Rome?” asked Polly, as she went up 
the long dim flights of stairs behind him. “Are 
you and Pippino neighbors?” 

“Not from Roma, signorina. From Ra- 
venna,” he replied proudly. “I speak very good 
English. I not speak like my mother and father. 
I translate for them very good.” 

From Ravenna, thought Polly. That was the 
place where Mr. Phelps had said he had last 
heard from Lindsay. 

“Have you been here very long?” 

“Four year only. My big brother Beppo, he 
come last week. He paint all faces on our mari- 
onettes very fine. My mother and sister, they 
dress the figures, and my father, he tell the story.” 

“What do you do?” 

“Tonio and me we work the figures. You 


118 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


know how? Up overhead we work them with 
iron rods and wires. It is very hard to do. You 
have to be strong in the arms and wrists, and 
quick.” 

“What good English you speak, Colombo.” 

“I have to,” he said simply. “I go to school, 
and when I come home I have to teach my mother 
and father English too.” 

They came to a long narrow room with a small 
stage at one end. It had been freshly scrubbed 
and was still damp, but wild flowers stood in 
glasses here and there on the window sills, and 
up on the old square piano in one corner were 
daffodils and jonquils. 

“After it is over, you will come behind the 
scenes and be introduced to all our actors,” Co- 
lombo said with a smile, as he bowed and left 
them to do his part in the performance. 

“How seriously they all take it, don’t they?” 
Polly whispered. 

“But it is serious,” explained Phil. “Night 
after night the people come up here to listen to 
old Signor Palesi roar out his great lines, and 
they are very partial to their favorite heroes. 
Wait till you hear the applause when Orlando 
does any stunts, or Blanchefleur is rescued by 


A CLUE FROM ITALY 


119 


Charlemagne. The Palesi are very famous as 
marionette makers in Italy. They have done 
this for generations, father and son, and the old 
man is a dandy chap. Looks like Dumas senior. 
Here they go.” 

Polly watched and listened wide-eyed, as the 
clumsy, gayly clad figures went back and forth 
upon the little stage, and Papa Palesi’s voice 
stormed from the wings with the noble rage of 
Charlemagne or the heroic challenges of Orlando. 
When Blanchefleur tripped on, stubbing her toes 
at every step, it was a woman’s voice that spoke 
the lines. 

“That is Francesca, his daughter, speaking 
now,” Phil told her under his breath. “Like it, 
Polly?” 

Polly nodded her head in silence. Of course 
she liked it, but through it all, while Saladin 
stormed the holy city, and Charlemagne chal- 
lenged him to mortal combat, she thought of 
Lindsay Phelps. It did seem strange that he 
should have gone to Ravenna, and now, here 
these people were from the same town. She 
made up her mind that she would ask the new- 
comer, Beppo, who painted the faces, whether he 
had met a brother artist back in the little hill 


120 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


town where exiled Dante lived, looking from its 
castled steep towards Florence. 

After the curtain fell, they went upon the 
stage and were introduced to the entire family. 
After she had been taken over to Blanchefleur 
and asked to admire her exquisite bridal costume, 
Polly at last found a chance to ask Beppo where 
he had painted the new head for the figure. 

“I bring this one with me but this time from 
the old country,” he told her happily, patting the 
figure’s head. ‘All winter I have worked there 
on new heads. I do the men by myself, but not 
the women faces, for they must be very fine and 
beautiful. This is painted by a friend of mine 
in Ravenna.” 

“Mr. Phelps?” The name fairly sprang from 
her lips in her eagerness, but he smiled and shook 
his head. 

“Not Mr. Phelps himself. A boy he show 
how before he go away from Ravenna, boy 
named Luigi.” 

“But do you know where Mr. Phelps himself 
has gone?” 

“To Rome in February.” Beppo shrugged 
his shoulders. “After that I know not. In 
April he was to return as soon as Donna Cos- 


A CLUE FROM ITALY 


121 


tanza return. Then he had to come, that I 
know. It is business, very important.” 

“Is she young?” asked Polly. It seemed such 
a pretty name, Donna Costanza. How Isabel 
would have at once begun to weave a romance! 

“Oh, no! Old, old and wrinkled like a winter 
apple in May,” laughed Beppo. “He wished to 
paint her picture, so he said; but also, he have 
business with her. Surely he must come back.” 

And that was all, for just then Signor Palesi 
came and wished to show Polly how the rods 
worked above the stage, how they made the mari- 
onettes walk and raise their arms and turn their 
heads. 

It did seem too bad to catch a clue and lose it 
all in a minute, just as if Lindsay had put his 
head up above the horizon and wigwagged at her, 
then dropped back again to the other side of the 
world, — to Ravenna and Donna Costanza. It 
was all she could learn from Beppo, though. 
Luigi would know more of the American artist 
who painted faces so well, but he did not. Still, 
she thought hopefully, it was something, and it 
had dropped at her feet right out of a clear sky. 

That night she wrote a letter to Mr. Phelps. 
It was an eager, “busy” letter, as Sue would have 


122 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


said, telling him what she had found out, and 
almost urging him to find out more for himself. 
Was it not a great deal to know that his boy 
would be at Ravenna in April? But after she 
had sealed and sent the letter, Polly pondered 
all by herself on who Donna Costanza could be, 
and why on earth Lindsay Phelps should want 
to trail away over to Italy to find her. 


CHAPTER XII 


THE LAST CALVERT POW-WOW 

The answer came to her after she had returned 
to Glenwood. Mrs. Abbott had sent her home 
on the midnight limited train in charge of her 
own maid, a rosy cheeked Swiss girl named 
Teenie Marie. It was really Christine Marie, 
but Aunt Milly always called her Teenie Marie, 
which suited her much better. 

“I’m sure I don’t need a guardian when I 
travel,” Polly had declared pleadingly, but all to 
no purpose. It was to please Aunt Evelyn and 
the Admiral, Aunt Milly told her soothingly, so 
Teenie Marie went along, and was sent back 
safely as soon as she had personally conducted 
Polly to the Admiral’s convoy. 

The first day at home was so full of greetings, 
— as Lucy May put it, 4 ‘comings and goings and 
doings,” — that Polly felt as if she had been away 
a month. The girls were eager to hear from her 
own lips what luck she had had in hunting the 


124 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


summer camp outfits and all about Kate’s kid- 
dies. 

The second day after her arrival brought the 
letter from Mr. Phelps.. Polly picked it out 
eagerly from the mail at the breakfast table, and 
gave a cry of delight that made Aunt Evelyn 
glance up inquiringly. 

“Oh, it’s from him,” Polly said, quite as if they 
knew all that she had been doing. “See,” she 
cried, holding up the envelope, with its curious 
handwriting, clear, but with the characters stand- 
ing upright like musical notes or Arabic figures. 
“I do hope he is pleased.” 

“So do we, so do we,” the Admiral agreed 
heartily. “Is it from any craft flying our flag, 
Polly?” 

“From Jack or Phil, I suppose.” Aunt Eve- 
lyn spoke tranquilly. “Nice boys.” 

“But it isn’t,” protested Polly, opening the 
letter. “It’s from Mr. Phelps. The old dear, 
to write back to me so soon. Do you mind very 
much. Aunt Evelyn and Grandfather dear, if I 
read it to myself first? It’s something very spe- 
cial and a secret too, but I’ll tell you all about it 
later.” 

“Well, upon my soul, I like that,” the Admiral 


LAST CALVERT POW-WOW 125 


exclaimed boyishly. “A secret, and she saw him 
just once. Polly, sometimes you surprise even 
me, — sometimes. Fire ahead, though, and sig- 
nal me when you’re ready. I’m going out on 
the porch.” 

It was a close, humid morning with a light mist 
rising from the warm earth. Tan lay stretched 
out near the willow armchair in the comer facing 
the Bay, lazy and sleepy, and Polly had to step 
over him in order to perch herself on the Ad- 
miral’s arm-chair. When she was there, she 
always felt perfectly safe in springing anything 
new. It was really having him at a disadvan- 
tage, for she could hug him, and run her fingers 
through his thick curly iron-gray hair, and not 
give him a ghost of a chance to escape. First of 
all, she told him about Beppo, and what she had 
found out about Lindsay up at the marionette 
theatre. 

The letter was very characteristic of Mr. 
Phelps. First he told of how, on Saturday 
night, he had called up Doctor Elliott, and had 
invited him up to dinner the following day, — him 
and Kate. 

“And now, you see, I’m launched, and nothing 
can stop me from going into partnership with 


126 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


the orphans, or was it half orphans? At all 
events, I like your big Doctor, and I think he’s 
on the right track. 

“So, dear child, you have sent out an arrow of 
longing after my lost boy. It is very sweet of 
you to take the interest or even to try to guess 
at the heartache he has left behind him. And 
it is because you have done this that I am go- 
ing to tell you more about him, then you will 
understand why it is I feel so sure of his re- 
turn. 

“Probably you do not know that Lindsay is 
not my own son. So far as the birthright goes, 
he is not, but Mrs. Phelps and I never felt any 
difference. Not having been blessed with any 
little ones of our own, we decided to adopt one. 
And this was Lindsay. He was a little found- 
ling, brought tq the Foundlings’ Home in New 
York City by an Italian nurse. We were shown 
the records such as they were. He was of 
American parentage, born in Bavenna, Italy. 
His father and mother were both dead, and the 
nurse did not feel that she could care for the 
baby herself, so she brought him to the Sisters. 
It all seemed satisfactory, and he was a splendid 
laddie, so we took him for our own. Mrs. 


LAST CALVERT POW-WOW 127 


Phelps died when he was five years old, and I 
was left to bring the little lad up by myself. 

“That is all I know, personally. It satisfied 
me; but when Lindsay came of age, and I told 
him the truth, he was all broken up. I did not 
think the boy would take it so to heart. He 
wished to go abroad and look up the old birth 
records, and try to find some trace of the old 
nurse or her family. The name was Costanza 
Neri, I remember.” 

“There,” exclaimed Polly triumphantly, “and 
that’s her name. Costanza Neri.” 

“God bless my heart and soul, Polly,” said the 
Admiral, vigorously blowing his nose, “I don’t 
see where you get your nose for news. N ot from 
my side of the family. Milly is the only one in- 
clined that way. What are you going to do 
about it now that you have found him? That’s 
what I’d like to know.” 

“I can’t tell exactly,” Polly said confidentially. 
“You see, he isn’t found for certain yet, but I 
do think after all these years of care and love 
that he should think about poor old blind Mr. 
Phelps left alone there in New York. What’s 
money after all? It’s not fair to forget all he 
has done for him. I’d love to tell him so, but 


128 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


one has to be fearfully tactful when one is trying 
to manage anything.” 

“I don’t doubt it one bit,” agreed the Admiral, 
“not a bit. Go ahead full speed, matey.” • 

“I think I might send just a nice letter to him 
at Ravenna, a sort of reminder, don’t you know, 
that he is expected back.” 

“Better mind your p’s and q’s and keep to your 
own course.” 

“What would you think, Grandfather Admi- 
ral, of a captain who kept to his own course after 
he had picked up a C.Q.D. call? Isn’t that bet- 
ter than minding your p’s and q’s? Mind your 
C.Q.D. ’s. Supposing that I had found out from 
Beppo, and never said one word to Mr. Phelps? 
Why, it was just thrown at me, and I had to tell. 
Is Lindsay really nice?” She eyed her grand- 
father speculatively, as if wondering whether, 
after all, the young man could be worth the trou- 
ble, and the Admiral laughed. 

“I’m sure I don’t know. I haven’t seen the 
lad in years. But if you and Milly have made 
up your minds that he is to come back and live 
the way Stant wants him to, you’ll succeed. 
Don’t try to draw me into it, though. It’s your 
own doings, as Welcome used to say.” 


LAST CALVERT POW-WOW 129 


“But I think it is the right thing to do,” Polly 
declared, hopefully. “I think we’re terribly re- 
sponsible for other people’s happiness. It seems 
as if God is putting things in front of us all the 
time, just to find out whether or not we’ll do 
them for Him. And when we don’t do them, 
why, it sort of breaks the chain, don’t you know? 
I think I’ll write the letter.” 

So, in the midst of the spring rush over com- 
ing examinations and preparations for the sum- 
mer camping, she did find time to send off a 
letter over seas to the little mediaeval hill town, 
where Casa Neri stood in its own small olive 
grove above the village. And once it had gone, 
Polly promptly forgot about it in the fun of the 
closing days at Calvert. 

The girls of the Senior Class had planned their 
own festivities, a farewell midnight feast the 
Saturday before Commencement week, a June 
walk in costume, and a luncheon to the faculty, 
with Miss Honoria Calvert in state at the head 
of the table, and their beloved Fraulein at the 
foot. 

The luncheon was a great success. Polly pro- 
posed a toast to Fraulein Ottima Wieboldt. 
“The ever blessed Timmie,” she began, “who has 


130 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


guided our wayward and wandering footsteps 
through all the hidden and devious paths of 
knowledge with much wailing and gnashing of 
teeth — ” 

“Whose teeth, Polly?” asked Crullers, inno- 
cently. 

“Our teeth, goose. To continue: And with- 
out whose never- failing sympathy and encour- 
agement we never could have reached our present 
summit of endeavor and accomplishment — ” 

“Beware of the summit, Polly,” quoth Ted 
under her breath, as she sat next the speaker. 
“Pride goeth before a fall.” 

“To her, the most patient, the most under- 
standing, the most gentle of teachers, blessed 
Timmie !” 

And Fraulein wept, and had to take off her 
spectacles and let Polly shine them up for her 
before she could respond to the toast. 

Then Isabel gave the toast to Miss Calvert, 
though the girls were sure that she would not 
stick to the path of pure rhetoric. But Lady 
Vanitas did, stuck to it clear from base to sum- 
mit, and set a flag on the topmost crest, so to 
speak. Miss Calvert’s clear-cut, pale face fairly 
blushed with pleasure over Isabel’s delicate com- 



Polly Presided at the Historic Chafing Dish 




LAST CALVERT POW-WOW 131 


pliments and glowing encomiums. Altogether, 
it was the close of a memorable week. 

To the girls who composed the Outing Club, 
the happiest time of all was the meeting held in 
Peggie Murray’s room. Polly presided at the 
historic chafing dish, and all the original Hungry 
Six members were present, excepting Kate alone. 
Of course the later members — Natalie and Peg- 
gie, Vera and Betty, Hallie and Marjorie — were 
permitted to be present, but only as admiring 
spectators, and participants in the feast. It was 
the five “originals” who delivered the orations, 
and who prepared the feast, and they surely did 
reign for the night. There were Sue and Ted, 
Isabel, Ruth, and Polly. And such an exchange 
of reminiscences! Crullers begged to be admit- 
ted, hut as she had not been a “really truly” 
member, the girls said she could not share in the 
higher rites. 

“After I’ve done everything for you for 
years,” Crullers cried passionately; “after I’ve 
suffered again and again — ” 

“When didst suffer, maiden?” sternly de- 
manded Ted. 

“Falling from the back wall the night you sent 
me after pickled limes and pralines! I skinned 


132 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


my knee awfully, and nearly broke my neck too.” 

“Still thou art but Hebe,” Ted insisted mildly. 
“Thou wast permitted to carry the cup and the 
basket too.” 

“Don’t scrap this last night, girls,” pleaded 
Isabel wistfully. “It seems so sad that this mo- 
ment can never, never come again.” She waved 
a spoon above the chafing dish while Polly made 
the pimento sandwiches. “Who knows what the 
future holds in store for us — ” 

“I can prophesy what it holds in store for you 
if you let that crab meat a la Newburg burn or 
curdle,” Ted interrupted. “Here, Macbeth, 
‘Give me the daggers!’ ” 

She took the fork and spoon away and bran- 
dished them at an imaginary Duncan. “Now 
go on, Isabel. Moan some more at us, all about 
fate and battle, murder and sudden death. 
When shall we six meet again! Go on, while I 
stir the fatal brew.” 

“Ted, you haven’t one bit of sentiment in you,” 
Isabel declared. “Don’t you feel any thrill of 
impending separation?” 

“Impending fiddlesticks! I have a firm belief 
that we shall keep on meeting each other every 
now and then all through life. You can’t help 


LAST CALVERT POW-WOW 133 


it with people that you like. There’s a sort of 
invisible magnetism — ” 

“Did you ever see any visible magnetism?” 
asked Sue scathingly. “Ted, you’re out of your 
depths. Ladle out the crab meat and let others 
wear the crown. I’m all hollow.” 

“Sue’s an aching void,” Polly laughed, hand- 
ing over a sandwich to the suffering one. “Let’s 
pledge ourselves, girls, to at least one reunion 
each year. I don’t see why we couldn’t do that. 
Grandfather goes up to meet a lot of his school- 
mates at Annapolis every year for a royal old 
time. Let’s resolve to do it right now. Choose 
a date — ” 

“Better make it a movable feast,” said Ted 
practically. “Then we can write around before- 
hand, and see if everyone can attend. Suppose 
it should happen to be somebody’s wedding day 
and she couldn’t come? Let’s make it provision- 
ally the tenth of June.” 

“Is that a regular motion, Madam President?” 
Sue asked anxiously. “Because I didn’t bring 
along my book of minutes.” 

“No, it’s not, because we’re not in regular ses- 
sion. We are not in unity assembled together. 
This is a love feast — ” 


134 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“A pow-wow,” suggested Peggie shyly, as she 
sat cross-legged on the big Indian rug before 
Polly’s chair. 

“Pow-wow it is, small daughter of Wyoming. 
Suppose we say that we will hold our annual 
pow-wow henceforth on or about the tenth of 
June at Glen wood.” 

Everyone promised faithfully to attend, and 
Isabel declared that now she felt much better, 
and as though they had lent a helping hand to 
fate. 

Commencement Day came and went, and 
Polly marveled at the small ripple it made. 
F our years ago, at her first Commencement when 
she had felt herself launched as a sort of baby 
Freshman, it had seemed far more exciting. 
Calvert, of course, was not like a real college. 
It was a preparatory school where you could take 
your choice. You could either be finished off 
after grammar school, or you could be prepared 
for real college. It was convenient in many 
ways, Ted said, and satisfactory from all 
aspects. 

Polly felt that she was being prepared for 
something, but it would not be college. It had 
been settled that Aunt Evelyn and the Admiral 


LAST CALVERT POW-WOW 135 


should travel — go on what he termed his last 
cruise — and Polly was to go with them. She 
had been given her choice of remaining with Aunt 
Milly in New York or of going, and had chosen 
to share the fortunes of the rest of the crew, as 
she put it. 

“Then we’ll go by sea as much as we can, 
matey,” the Admiral had decided. “It takes 
longer and you have a better time. We’ll round 
the two capes and visit the islands and certain 
ports of call I have in mind. It will keep us 
happy and busy for a year or so, until you’ve put 
on long dresses and have to get out of your middy 
suit for regulation togs, see? If I don’t steer you 
straight, the girls would have you pinning on 
your bridal veil before vou’d seen the world at 
all.” 

“Bridal veils are so far off, Grandfather,” 
Polly answered happily, both arms around his 
neck and her cheek close against his, “that I don’t 
care one bit about them.” 

“Maybe so, but I’m not taking any chances. 
Every Glenwood bride for the last three genera- 
tions has gone down those steps in her ’teens.” 
The Admiral’s eyes filled though his lips were 
firm* It was not a pleasant prospect to think of 


136 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


the coming day, even four or five years off, when 
the last little bride would step from under the 
tall white portico, wave good-bye to Glenwood, 
and leave Tan and himself sitting on the old 
porch alone. 


CHAPTER XIII 


CASA NERI RESPONDS 

“What’s a slicker, Polly?” asked Natalie, go- 
ing over her personal outfit the day before the 
exodus. “You have down on the list three pair 
of boots — soft low ties, rubber soled sneakers, 
and high leather scout boots — bloomers, middies, 
underwear of cotton crepe to be washed in any 
handy wayside brook, bathing suit, and slicker 
or poncho.” 

“They’re about the same thing, I think,” Polly 
answered, down on her knees at her own camp 
kit. “I know it’s something you put around you, 
and it’s waterproof. I’ve ordered one apiece. 
I do love these skirts of Russian crash, don’t 
you, girls? And wait until you see our folding 
tent shelves that you can stack everything on.” 

“It’s a wonder Polly hasn’t suggested folding 
us up out of the way too,” Vera said with a sigh. 
“We’ve got folding stools, folding shelves, and 
folding table. Betty’s even made some folding 
book racks.” 


138 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“I’m going to start a camp library and you’ll 
all enjoy it too,” said Betty placidly. “We each 
take along two books that none of the rest have 
read, and they go a long way.” 

“Did anyone think of jack knives?” asked 
Margery suddenly. “We’ll need them up there 
in the woods.” 

“Child, did you think we would lead you into 
the forest primaeval without jack knives?” re- 
plied Polly blithely. “Listen to this, all packed 
and shipped to Montalban for us.” She read 
the list in triumph: “ ‘Jack knives, pocket com- 
passes, rubber drinking cups, waterproof match- 
boxes, bag of wire nails, two axes, four lanterns, 
medicine case, screw top bottles, surgeon’s plas- 
ter, needles, pins, thread, rope, twine.’ There. 
Phil and Jack helped me make it out and said 
that we’d need eveiy last thing on it, and maybe 
more too. How much money have we spent al- 
together, Sue?” 

“One hundred, seventeen dollars, and fifty-five 
cents,” came back from the retiring treasurer 
promptly. “And that includes one second-hand 
army cook tent, $8.50, and three second-hand 
army wall tents, $15 each. I think we’ve done 
splendidly so far.” 


CASA NERI RESPONDS 


139 


“We’ve each furnished our own camp kit, re- 
member,” Natalie put in. “The tents are al- 
ways the biggest item.” 

“These are plenty large enough for us, girls,” 
said Polly. “There will be room for two cots 
in each, wash stand, table, and odds and ends. 
And we can sell them at the end of the camp- 
ing out, if we want to, so I thought they’d be a 
good investment.” 

“What do you get for third-hand tents?” 
asked Crullers seriously. 

“Tut, tut, child,” Polly laughed, patting her 
head. “Don’t ask foolish questions at the last 
minute. And girls, another thing, I ordered 
enough provisions sent up for two weeks. By 
the end of the first week we’ll know just what 
we need, and what can be bought on the spot 
from the farmers.” 

“And we start Wednesday morning!” Mar- 
jorie fairly glowed as she said it. “Wish we had 
an airship.” 

“Some people are never satisfied. You’ll go 
by way of Old Point Comfort, young lady. We 
get the steamer there for New York, then change 
and go up the Hudson to Albany, and on by rail 
to Montalban. Aunt Evelyn’s going as far as 


140 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


New York with us to see that we don’t get lost 
on the way. Then she will visit Aunt Milly and 
we will meet Kate and the Doctor, and go up 
with them. Kate says they’ve got a splendid 
old farmhouse, all run down, and unpainted.” 

“I know what you forgot, Polly,” Crullers 
said. “A camp chaperon.” 

“I’ve heard about the fatal gift of beauty, 
Jane Daphne Adams,” Ted exclaimed, “but you 
take the cake for the fatal gift of always remem- 
bering the most uncomfortable facts of life. 
Who wants a camp chaperon? You’ll all be 
models of good behaviour without Sue and me 
this year.” 

“Now, listen,” Polly said happily. “I’ve 
wanted it to be a surprise. We’re going to have 
a camp chaperon, and she’s a dear, too, just as 
nice as Miss Penelope was last year. It’s Aunt 
Milly, girls. She says that Takeshi and Uncle 
Thurlow will be perfectly contented all by them- 
selves at the Castle, for Uncle’s going to have 
a summer class there of budding geniuses.” 

“Genii,” murmured Yera. 

“These are just plain geniuses, Nipper,” Polly 
returned serenely. “And they’ll want every sin- 
gle corner in the Castle to paint in and live in, 


CASA NERI RESPONDS 


141 


so Aunt Milly’s awfully glad to escape and get 
into a middy blouse and skirt like the rest of us. 
Isn’t it a dandy idea?” 

It certainly was, the girls all agreed. The 
camp chaperon had been a sort of bete non that 
they had avoided even in conversation. She was 
necessary of course, but where could she be 
found, the perfect camp comrade and chum who 
would likewise know just what to do if anything 
happened? 

“Stop chortling over it,” Ted said at last. 
“You’re all chortling like a lot of penguins.” 

“Penguins don’t chortle, Ted,” Crullers be- 
gan dubiously. “What is it that chortles? And 
what does it really mean?” 

“Means that you volubly and gleefully express 
your delight and satisfaction over something,” 
said Isabel. “Still it is an obsolete word.” 

“Tush, child,” Ted replied gently. “I often 
chortle. And even if I am not to be in the camp 
with you, my spirit will chortle at rosy dawn 
and dewy eve over your luck in having Mrs. 
Abbott for a chaperon. So, Lady Vanitas.” 

On Tuesday Ted and Sue left for the former’s 
home at Lake Winona. As Ted said, if you had 
to go through something unpleasant, the sooner 


142 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


it was over the better, and she declined to mope 
around Queen’s Ferry until the last gun was 
fired after the departing campers. 

Polly, with Peggie and Ruth, went down to 
the station to see the two off. It was early in the 
morning, and the rest of the girls were “slumber- 
ing still,” like Kathleen of old, Sue said. 

“You dear old starter of things,” Ted put her 
arms around Polly for a farewell hug. “Please 
miss us all the time this summer. I feel as if I 
was being banished into exile. Here we part on 
the frontier.” 

“It’s no use trying not to. I know that I’m 
going to weep just like Crullers the minute the 
train moves out. Peggie, stand by.” Polly 
tried to smile, but it did seem like the first step 
in the general breaking up of school ties to see 
Ted slip out of the life at Queen’s Ferry. She 
had been part of all the fun at Calvert Hall for 
four years, and one of the moving spirits of the 
Vacation Club. Warm-hearted, impulsive Ted; 
she was the first one to plunge into any partisan 
quarrel and the first to see the right way out and 
to patch it up. 

There were real tears in Polly’s eyes, and in 
Peggie’s too, when they turned back up the hill 


CASA NERI RESPONDS 


143 


road after the train pulled out of sight around 
the curve of the shore line. By the time Glen- 
wood was reached, though, there was too much 
work waiting for them both to allow of time being 
spent in mourning. 

“We’ve got all we can attend to without weep- 
ing over the departed ones,” Polly said. 

“Oh, Polly, please don’t call them that,” 
pleaded Isabel. “It’s such a bad sign.” 

“I don’t believe in any signs excepting four- 
leaved clovers and new moons,” Polly said com- 
fortably. 

Aunt Evelyn had insisted on bringing all the 
girls down to Glenwood after Commencement 
Day had closed the Hall, so there were Peggie, 
Hallie, Vera, Margery, Betty and Crullers, all 
happy guests, waiting expectantly for the hour 
of departure to Old Point Comfort. Crullers’s 
mother had relented, and she was to go with the 
party after all. Isabel was the only girl in the 
Camping Club, besides Polly herself, who was 
a resident of Queen’s Ferry. 

“Finish all your packing and preparations to- 
night, girls,” Aunt Evelyn told them, after din- 
ner was over. “There won’t be time in the morn- 
ing before we leave.” 


144 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


Accordingly, every detail was attended to that 
night, each suitcase was packed with care, and 
every article was petted and patted as it was 
laid in place. The girls laughed at Crullers, 
who was fondling her new scout boots; yet each 
one of them had felt the same thrill every time 
they had looked over the camp outfits. Over 
and over again, each had secretly gone to Polly’s 
to try them on, and imagine herself up in the 
mountains, sniffing pines. The outfits repre- 
sented such splendid times to come. 

A little past ten Polly came softly downstairs, 
holding her blue Chinese kimono around her, and 
hunting for the Admiral. The others had all 
gone to bed, even Aunt Evelyn, but there was a 
light under the study door and she tapped lightly. 

“Come in,” called the Admiral drowsily. He 
was sitting by the south window where the rose 
vines and honeysuckle clambered, having his 
good-night smoke with Tan on guard as usual. 
“Hello there, matey,” he said cheerily. “Got 
your crew all below?” 

“All above, you mean,” Polly chuckled, set- 
ting her candle down on the table. The Admi- 
ral had clung to candles, and Polly dearly loved 
their soft mellow light. Ted always said that 


CASA NERI RESPONDS 145 


Polly was predestined to old-maidship because 
she delighted in candles, cats, and open fire- 
places. 

“Just give Polly a purring cat, a singing tea 
kettle, and a crackling fire, and she’ll never 
marry in this world,” she used to say, all of which 
Polly indignantly refuted. Of course she liked 
all three, but only as a sort of environment or 
setting where she might rest and plan all sorts of 
campaigns. 

“Every general likes his camp fire,” she would 
say. “Napoleon was always having his picture 
painted in front of one.” 

Tonight she drew a handy footstool over near 
the Admiral’s chair, and seated herself. 

“I only came down to say good-bye to you all 
by myself, you dear Grandfather. Are you go- 
ing to miss me fearfully? Well, listen, then. 
I want you to do something for me; there’s no- 
body else who can do it, understand, so I know 
you will, won’t you?” 

“No fair promising before I know what you’re 
after,” warned the Admiral. 

Polly laughed. “I haven’t said one word 
about it to anybody. Remember the letter that 
I wrote last April to Ravenna?” 


14 G POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“Bless my heart, I’d forgotten all about it.” 

“So had I,” she said placidly, “but it’s come 
back to roost, and as a blessing too. He got it 
all right, — Lindsay Phelps, I mean. I have had 
a letter from him at last. He has been very ill 
at the Casa Neri and his old nurse has been tak- 
ing care of him. I really think getting my let- 
ter has made him homesick. See, dear, here is 
his answer.” 

“Read it, child, read it. I haven’t my 
glasses.” 

So Polly softly read the letter from far Ra- 
venna. 

" ‘My dear Miss Polly: 

“ ‘It was ever so kind of you to take so much 
trouble over a stranger. I did not think that 
anyone cared to know what special spot of earth 
I happened to be on, so I have not written to any 
friends or to my father. 

“ ‘And so the old Castle is to be occupied. I 
am glad that Mr. Abbott cares enough about it 
to live there, and that you are planning to be 
near this summer. You will enjoy the life up 
there. I often wish I were back again.’ ” 

“That’s hopeful, isn’t it?” interpolated Polly. 

“ ‘All that I came over here to accomplish has 


CASA NERI RESPONDS 


147 


been finished, and I hope to sail for New York 
hy the end of June. I have not yet written to 
Mr. Phelps and would rather you did not tell him 
to expect me. Let it be a surprise. I wish we 
might all meet at Montalban. Don’t you think 
you could manage to coax father up there with 
the Abbotts? I really think you might, for you 
are responsible for my even wishing to come back 
home at all. Your letter was an inspiration. 

“ ‘Trusting that we may all meet at the Castle, 
I am, 

“ ‘Yours gratefully 

“ ‘Lindsay Phelps.’ ” 

“Now, sir, what do you think of your grand- 
daughter as a diplomat?” 

The Admiral leaned back his head and 
chuckled. “I’ll leave it to Stanton. But I’m 
mighty glad the boy’s coming home. I suppose, 
now, you want me to beguile Stant up to Mont- 
alban?” 

Polly leaned back on the stool, her hands clasp- 
ing her knees, and eyed him admiringly. 

“You dear! It’s wonderful of you to guess it 
before I had said one word. I’m hoping that 
just as soon as we’re gone — it will be pretty 
lonely here for you anyway — ” 

“First rest that I’ve had in a year,” he sighed. 


148 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 

“Tan and I were going to keep bachelor’s hall, 
but I suppose it’s a case of heave anchor and 
away. Let’s get these sailing orders right now. 
I’m to go to New York, see Stant, and get him 
up to Montalban. Where do you propose put- 
ting us after we get there?” 

“With Uncle Thurlow and Takeshi at the 
Castle. And then Lindsay will come from 
abroad and we’ll manage the reunion, see?” 

“What if they don’t want to reunite, eh?” 
asked the Admiral shrewdly. 

“Oh, I think they will. They need each other 
fearfully. Anyone with half an eye can see that. 
So it’s our duty, just plain duty, to bring them 
together. Of course I can understand how 
Lindsay would want to hunt up who he really 
is. Everyone is anxious to be sure he is who he 
thinks he is. That sounds mixed, but you know 
what I mean. Still, Lindsay should have re- 
membered the poor old blind king sitting alone 
in the sun. That’s all for tonight.” She 
leaned over him lovingly, her cheek pressed to 
his, her long brown hair mingling with his short 
iron gray curls. “Isn’t it lovely to understand 
each other perfectly and always be ready to 
stand by in case of trouble. You do stand 


CASA NERI RESPONDS 


149 


by so nobly. Grandfather Admiral dear.” 

“Tush, child, tush,” laughed the Admiral. 
“To bed with you. It’s hoist sails and away at 
daybreak.” 

“But you will come, won’t you?” 

“I’ll do my best,” he promised, and Polly went 
upstairs satisfied, for the Admiral’s best was sure 
to turn out right. 


CHAPTER XIV 


SEEING NEW YORK 

“This makes me think of the year we all went 
up to Lost Island on the ‘Hippocampus/ girls, 
remember ?” said Isabel, lifting her face to the 
sea breeze as the steamer headed up the coast 
from Old Point Comfort, bound for New York. 

It was a gay little group that stood up for- 
ward on the hurricane deck, Mrs. Langdon in 
its center. It was the first time she had borne 
the honors of club chaperon. 

“And doesn’t she look beautiful?” Yera said 
in an undertone to Betty. “Margery said last 
night she thought she was just like a dowager 
queen.” 

“Whoever heard of a dowager queen?” scoffed 
Betty. “You say the Queen Mother. Still she 
is awfully stately, and handsome, and all that. 
Wonder how she’d look out in the woods? 
That’s the test, Nipper. Imagine her in khaki.” 

“If she went to the woods, she would need pa- 


SEEING NEW YORK 


151 


vilions and accoutrements like the ancient Saxon 
queens did. Velvet and fine linen too. It’s all 
I’d ever wear if I had ashen gold hair and such a 
profile.” 

“You’ll keep to khaki,” Betty comforted her 
as a sister should. “Still I’m glad it’s Mrs. Ab- 
bott that’s going with us girls to camp. We 
don’t know what may lie ahead of us and we want 
somebody who is kind of rugged, don’t you 
know?” 

During the sea trip the girls were very proud 
of their chaperon, however, and on their best 
behaviour, although Crullers did say once that 
the reason she was so good was because Ted and 
Sue were not there to stimulate her to action. 

“I feel so sweet tempered and good, girls,” 
she sighed plaintivety. “It almost frightens 
me.” 

“Never mind worrying over it, honey,” Hal- 
lie soothed her. “It will all pass away once we 
get to the pineland. Just wait till you’re put 
on kitchen duty. If there’s anything can heat 
doing up a lot of dishes after a fish dinner, I want 
to see it.” 

“Polly’s taking a lot of paper pulp dishes, so 
we won’t have to do so much dish washing,” Isa- 


152 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


bel said tranquilly. “It was my suggestion.” 

“Precious Lady Vanitas! Farseeing Isabel!” 
chanted Hallie and Natalie together until Polly 
bore down upon them. 

Two double state-rooms had been taken, hold- 
ing four girls each, and Mrs. Langdon shared a 
single one with Polly across the cabin. Polly 
had told the stewardess where they were bound 
and all about their plans, so that she hovered 
over them protectingly all the way up the coast. 

It was dawn when they passed the Jersey fish- 
ing banks. The girls were up and on deck, all 
excepting Crullers, watching the fishing fleet of 
gray-sailed boats slip by in the morning mist. 
Some seemed sure of being run down by the 
steamer, but they held to their course and she 
waited for them to pass, and they scudded along 
almost under her figurehead. 

“I’ve always wanted to enter New York har- 
bor early in the morning,” Polly said eagerly, 
leaning on the forward rail and watching the 
shore line shape itself out of the pearl and gold of 
the morning haze. “Aunt Faith used to have a 
copy of ‘Paradise Lost’ with Dore’s illustrations, 
and this makes me think of some of them. The 
wideness and immensity of it all, as if there were 


SEEING NEW YORK 


153 


no shores. Oh, we’re slipping up to the Nar- 
rows now, aren’t we. Aunt Evelyn?” 

“Just ahead of you, Polly. There are two 
forts and to the left is Staten Island.” Mrs. 
Langdon put her arm around Polly’s waist, and 
pointed out the forts ahead, their guns nosing up 
out of the embankments. 

“Wish I could see Kill von Kull,” Crullers 
said anxiously. “I’ve always wanted to see that 
and Spuyten Duyvil. Polly, where’s Kill von 
Kull?” 

“Somewhere behind Staten Island,” Polly re- 
plied. She stood up, her hands deep in the 
pockets of her gray sport coat. Its collar was 
turned up for there was a tang of coolness in the 
air. They were coming in through the N arrows 
now, with all the splendid panorama of the lower 
Bay opening up before them. On the left lay 
Staten Island, its billowy hills green as the sea, 
its north shore bristling with shipping. 
v Now and then they passed a foreign ship 
swinging at anchor with some motor boats 
around it or huge lighters taking off freight. On 
the right was Gravesend Bay, then came Brook- 
lyn with Bay Ridge, a strip of green treetops 
along the high driveway, and finally Governor’s 


154 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


Island, a dot of emerald green that seemed to 
drop right under their bows out of the mist. 

“And there she is at last, bless her,” cried 
Betty, rapturously. “ ‘Though I should live a 
thousand years, I never can forget it !’ ” 

“Now what is it, little spouting sister?” Nip- 
per wound a loving arm around the younger 
member of the Morris family. Betty pointed at 
the Goddess of Liberty, a glorious sunlit figure 
looming up at their left. 

“She is a stately lady, isn’t she?” Polly said, 
her eyes wide with interest. “Maybe some time, 
ages and ages from now, another race will find 
her toppled over in the Bay and haul her out, 
then set her up as we did Diana of the Ephesians, 
and say that we used to worship her. Wouldn’t 
that be funny. Aunt Evelyn?” 

“The group that I like best of all,” Peggie put 
in, flushing a little as she always did when she 
had mustered up courage to put forth an opinion 
of her own, “is that of Electra and Orestes, be- 
cause she is just as tall and as strong as he is, 
with her arm around his shoulders. They are 
equal — brother and sister. This statue makes 
me think of her. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all 
the race were like that?” 


SEEING NEW YORK 


155 


“So we should be,” Natalie answered quickly, 
“if all the girls of all the ages had been born out 
in the open like you, Peggie, and brought up in 
the mountains. We’re petted and toasted and 
coddled too much.” 

“Natalie, stop just a minute, and do look at 
the city lifting out of the mist,” exclaimed Polly 
breathlessly, turning her head towards them. 
“It looks like a city in the clouds.” 

Gradually it took form and shape as they 
neared it, that vague, pearly outline in the sky. 
First it had seemed to hang before them on the 
clouds like a mirage. Then slowly, the mist 
seemed to slip back as they steamed towards it, 
the boat turning up the North River towards its 
slip, and the girls could trace familiar objects, the 
long curve of the Brooklyn Bridge with its newer 
sister bridges beyond, old Castle Garden, such 
a queer little antique touch on the green of Bat- 
tery Park, and far uptown one tall white tower 
so fair and majestic that it seemed, as Natalie 
said, like the cap of Fujiyama, the snow crested 
mountain of Japan, which she could remember 
having seen long ago. 

“Now, girls, listen one moment,” Mrs. Lang- 
don said when they were nearly in. “Your boat 


156 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


leaves for Albany at five, I think. It is nearly 
nine now. That gives you quite a good day in 
New York. Mrs. Abbott has very kindly of- 
fered to entertain us all, but don’t try to do too 
much.” 

“We won’t. Auntie,” Polly promised, mentally 
figuring just how much they could cover in the 
time. 

But after they had located Aunt Milly on the 
long pier, and had been whisked home with her, 
they found everything already planned and set- 
tled. Uncle Thurlow had a car and Mr. Phelps 
had urged the use of his own large limousine for 
the girls’ outing. So Aunt Milly took Polly, 
Peggie, Crullers, Betty, Hallie and Natalie 
under her wing in the limousine, with Maxon, 
Mr. Phelps’s chauffeur, to look after them; and 
Mr. Abbott ran his own car with Mrs. Langdon, 
Isabel, Vera, and Margery as his charges. 

“Such a brood,” Aunt Milly said merrily, as 
they started down Twelfth Street and turned up 
Fifth Avenue. “First of all, I want you to see 
the Park in the early morning. We think it is 
so beautiful then, although nearly all other New 
Yorkers go to it in the late afternoon. It’s 
straight up Fifth Avenue now, and Polly can be 


SEEING NEW YORK 157 

our megaphone man and point out all the spots 
of interest.” 

“Shall we go down on the East Side where the 
baby clinic is?” asked Betty anxiously. “Polly’s 
talked of nothing in New York excepting the 
baby clinic, Takeshi, and Mr. Abbott’s studio. 
I don’t wonder at her remembering Takeshi. 
Isn’t he the cutest little bronze man ever, Mrs. 
Abbott?” 

“He’d commit hari kari right on the spot if he 
heard you call him anything so undignified,” 
Aunt Milly answered teasingly. “Don’t you 
know, Betty, that Takeshi carries the weight of 
the world on his shoulders?” 

“You know, it’s the queerest thing,” Hallie 
broke in suddenly, “most of these big beautiful 
houses you see are boarded up.” 

“Closed for the summer,” Mrs. Abbott told 
her. 

“What a waste of material! Why don’t they 
hand them over to somebody like Doctor Elliott 
and do some good with them. Here one part of 
the city is boarded up and empty and Polly says 
the other part is all overcrowded. Why don’t 
they even things up?” 

“They don’t think about it, Hallie,” Mrs. Ab- 


158 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


bott said gravely. “I don’t know but what you 
may be right, but how would you like to have 
everyone running over your house?” 

“Oh, look at the Park, girls I” Peggie ex- 
claimed as they turned into the beautiful shaded 
Mall. “How I’d love to ride through here on 
horseback.” 

“Wish we were going to camp right over there 
on those rocks,” Crullers sighed. “It’s all so 
nice and handy.” 

“We’re going to have luncheon at historic 
Claremont,” Mrs. Abbott said. “You’ll like the 
trip through the Park and over to Riverside 
Drive and on up to Claremont. I do want you 
to have at least one hour in the Metropolitan Mu- 
seum, though.” 

The morning seemed to fly by. Peggie 
begged to be left at the Museum and called for 
on their way back from Claremont. 

“I don’t care a bit about not eating, Mrs. Ab- 
bott,” she pleaded, “if I can only stay here 
longer.” But the girls carried her off just the 
same, and when she was seated in the old dining- 
room overlooking the splendid sweep of the Hud- 
son, she agreed it was better to “see all.” 

The afternoon was taken up with an hour in 


SEEING NEW YORK 


159 


the Museum of Natural History, — all the time 
they could spare — and the run back to the little 
house on West Twelfth Street. 

“We don’t want to try taking you all through 
the crowded West Side streets in a car,” Mrs. 
Abbott said, “and besides you must rest a little 
before going to the boat.” 

When they reached the house, another surprise 
awaited them. Tea was served in the studio, 
and who should be pouring it but Faith Page, 
Polly’s youngest aunt. In some way, it seemed 
to Polly as if Aunt Faith never grew any older. 
It was as if the kind years shut their eyes and let 
her pass on untouched. She was tall and slender, 
with beautiful wavy hair and wistful gray eyes. 
Aunt Milly was plump and lovable like the Ad- 
miral, and Aunt Evelyn had always been the 
beauty of the family as well as the eldest of the 
sisters, both rather hard facts to live up to; but 
Aunt Faith was like one of the daughters of the 
Moon, Polly said, that Dante and Virgil watched 
as they strolled about in the shadowy silver twi- 
light. 

Honorable Lady Faith, as he persisted in call- 
ing her, was the only member of the family ex- 
cepting Mr. Abbott himself, to whom Takeshi 


160 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 

succumbed. Even Polly had failed to subjugate 
the little Jap, but he hovered over the gracious 
lady at the tea table with a smile of perfect hap- 
piness. 

“Oh, Aunt Milly,” Polly said softly from 
where she sat curled up on a big couch by the 
open window. “Takeshi is just like the big 
plump Buddha in the new art gallery at the Mu- 
seum. He has the widest happiest smile, hasn’t 
he, girls? Just look at him beam on Aunt Faith 
when he comes back now.” 

The bell downstairs gave its faint mellow ring, 
and presently Takeshi returned, bowing in Mr. 
Phelps and Uncle Thurlow. 

“Never say that I can’t spring a surprise my- 
self, Polly,” the latter said. “Behold a guest 
for your tea, young lady.” 

“Only for a few minutes,” protested Mr. 
Phelps. “We came to take you down to the 
Albany boat at five, and it is now after 
four.” 

Deftly Polly managed to detach him from the 
tea table group for a few minutes and have him 
all to herself over in a comer. 

“I did want a chance to thank you for help- 
ing Doctor Elliott so splendidly,” she said 


SEEING NEW YORK 


161 


eagerly. “We never thought that you would 
care so much.” 

“It isn’t a case of caring so much,” he pro- 
tested smilingly. “But if you girls could give 
a hundred from your little hard-earned nest egg, 
I should have been a nice friend to the cause if 
I couldn’t give in proportion!” 

“Still, it was splendid. And we’re all hoping 
that you will come up to the Castle, and then, 
perhaps, run over to our camp this summer. 
Won’t you, please?” 

He shook his head doubtfully, while Polly al- 
most held her breath, thinking of the Casa Neri 
and her letter from there. 

“Hardly that, Lady Polly. I’m rather a quiet 
old chap, you know, and it’s quite a trip.” 

Polly’s eyes sparkled. She wanted so much to 
put her arms around him just as if he had been 
the Admiral, and tell him all about her surprise, 
but that would have spoiled everything. 

“Perhaps you will come, though. Have you 
heard anything more from — ” she hesitated. 

“From Lindsay?” he spoke cheerfully. “Yes, 
one letter more. It was a good, manly sort of 
letter, quite like the boy himself, but it told me 
nothing new.” 


162 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“The cars are waiting, girls,” called Aunt 
Milly, coming from the front windows. “Let’s 
say good-bye.” 

“And drink a stirrup cup,” added Uncle 
Thurlow, towering above the circle around F aith, 
with one tea cup raised in mid-air. “Here’s to 
the next meeting of the clan and their friends at 
the Castle.” 

Polly was busy saying good-bye to the two 
aunts, and each one filled her head with charac- 
teristic injunctions. 

“Do be careful, Polly, of snakes and mosqui- 
toes,” Mrs. Langdon begged. “Have you net- 
ting flaps to protect the sleeping tents? And 
you might remember to wear a hat now and then, 
so as not to have too many freckles. And look 
out for the drinking supply, Polly. That is most 
important, and don’t get acquainted with all the 
natives.” 

“Dear heart,” whispered Aunt Faith, slipping 
her arms around Polly, “be sure and choose a site 
for your camp with a beautiful outlook towards 
the sunset. And sing every evening around 
your campfire. Remember, Polly, white hya- 
cinths to feed the soul even while you buy bread 
for the body.” 


SEEING NEW YORK 


1G3 


Takeshi stood bowing on the front steps as 
they went down to the waiting cars. 

“Good-bye, Takeshi,” said Polly. “We’ll see 
you at the Castle.” 

“May you walk on sunbeams all summer in the 
favor of Amatarasu,” responded Takeshi, 
blandly. 

“Now, I wonder what he meant,” Polly 
thought, but she told Peggie aloud, “Well, I 
hope we do walk on sunbeams, but we’re taking 
along our ponchos in case of rain just the same.” 

She was the last one to reach the big car, and 
had to sit on Peggie’s lap on one of the rumbles. 
It was only a short run through old Greenwich 
Village to the Albany Line pier on West Street, 
but a thrill of excitement came when the two 
cars swung down the long covered runway to the 
steamer, pursued by a running line of porters. 

“Oh, it’s just like going abroad, isn’t it?” said 
Betty. 

“I don’t know because I’ve never been,” Hal- 
lie sighed. “But if it’s anything like this, I hope 
I’ll go some day. I’m just like the Admiral’s 
Stoney. T suttinly do love comings and go- 
ings.’ ” 

“Take good care of your Aunt Milly,” Mr. 


164 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 

Abbott cautioned Polly at the last minute. “I’ll 
be at the Castle inside of a couple of weeks. 
There goes the last bell. Good-bye, girlie.” 

Mrs. Abbott hurried aboard with her brood 
around her and a couple of porters loaded with 
suitcases. Crullers steadfastly refused to be 
separated from hers, and at last, just as the boat 
moved out of its slip into the river current, she 
dove into it in triumph and produced her sur- 
prise. 

“I’ve brought it all the way from Queen’s 
Ferry, and never told a soul, girls,” she exclaimed 
breathlessly. “Dangle it out now good and 
plenty.” 

“Oh, you dear old Crullers !” cried Polly, as the 
wind caught the long flag and fluttered it out 
over the heads of the group of girls standing up 
in the prow of the big white steamer. White it 
was, with broad blue letters outlined in crimson, 
and it proclaimed to all the world at large: 

THE POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB. 


CHAPTER XV 


MAPLEDENE FAKM 

The girls were so completely tired out that 
not one of them remained up late that night go- 
ing up the river. Not even the beauties of the 
Hudson by moonlight could coax them out on 
deck. Once past Storm King, after they had 
all eaten a good dinner, one by one they turned 
into their berths and slept peacefully until the 
boat docked at Albany the following morning. 

From Albany on to Montalban, the journey 
was made by rail, changing cars once at Schenec- 
tady. After leaving here the train swung out 
through the great Mohawk Valley with its splen- 
did views of green glades sloping to upland 
meadows that blended higher up into the forests 
on the foothills of the Helderbergs. 

On this last train there were only a baggage 
car and a couple of wooden passenger coaches, 
old-fashioned ones, with dark red velvet covered 
seats, swaying lamps, and a remonstrating 


166 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 

squeak from one end to the other. The engine 
puffed and rattled all the way up through the 
mountains most delightfully. Betty declared 
it fussed just exactly the way the old conductor 
did. He was short and stout, and he objected 
volubly to the heat and to the dust and to the way 
the whole system in general was run. Sitting 
in the last seat before the open door, he told Polly 
all about his career on the railroad. As Isabel 
said, Polly always managed to get acquainted 
with people, and coax their whole life history 
out of them inside of ten minutes. 

‘'Started first on cattle trains down in Texas 
when I was ’bout nineteen,” he said. “Liked it, 
too, till I married a girl at one of the ranches 
we used to pass on our way through to El Paso. 
I’d be sitting up on the running board, and she’d 
be way over yonder, watching for me, and we’d 
wave to each other. Every other day that was. 
She wore pink a whole lot, — pink dresses, and 
pink sunbonnets, and pink hair ribbons — ” 

“I love pink too,” put in Polly interestedly. 
“Go on.” 

“Oh, Polly,” called Natalie from the platform, 
“do come out and see the way we’re just skirt- 
ing around these mountains.” 


MAPLEDENE FARM 


167 


“In a minute,” said Polly. “What else?” 

“Well, one day I says to our engineer, ‘Char- 
lie,’ I says to him, ‘I’m going back to get that 
girl and marry her.’ And so I did. Found out 
later that was what she wanted me to do. But 
she wanted to come north, so here we are.” 

“Where is she?” asked Polly. 

He smiled comfortably and pointed back east 
along the track. 

“Two miles out of Albany in the big green 
house on the State trolley line. We’ve got six 
children too.” 

“Have they nice names?” Polly always liked 
children to have nice names, not especially ro- 
mantic ones, but names that meant something. 

“Fine. Sib, Kit, Nan, Len, Fred, and Pip.” 
He rattled them off easily. “Let’s see, that ain’t 
what the Missus calls them either, but the only 
place you’d find the right ones is in the Family 
Bible. Sib is Sybil Lenora. Kit is Katherine 
Mary. That’s two. Nan is short for Nancy, 
and Len for Leonard Percy. Fred’s plain 
Frederick after his dad, and little Pip’s named 
for her mother, Lydia Emily. Pretty good 
choice, ain’t they?” He rose reluctantly. 

“You may see Len up your way,” he continued. 


168 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“He’s working for Mr. Butts in the grocery at 
Montalban. You see there’s a lot of artist folks 
up there, and Len he wants to learn how to draw 
and paint, and he thought he might catch on to 
the knack of it being around all the time. Good- 
bye. We’re getting there now. Hope when 
you come back, you get this train, and when you 
go to Albany look for the big green house.” 

“I will.” Polly fairly glowed with pleasure, 
as she promised. “And if I see any of the chil- 
dren I’ll wave to them, and they’ll wonder who 
it is.” 

“Polly, you’re simply incorrigible,” Aunt Mil- 
licent said when the father of six had safely de- 
posited them all on the platform at Montalban. 
“And I heard your Aunt Evelyn tell you to be 
sure and not make promiscuous acquaintances.” 

“He isn’t promiscuous, Auntie,” Polly said, 
waving to the departing train, “he’s the father of 
Len, and ‘Len’s going to sell us groceries all 
summer, and he wants to take lessons from Uncle 
Thurlow.” 

“Well, he’d better stick to the railroad, I 
think.” 

“Oh, not the conductor,” laughed Polly. 
“Len. That’s one of his boys.” 


MAPLEDENE FARM 


169 


The other girls had started in to reconnoitre 
at once. The station consisted of a platform 
with a semaphore at one end, a little express 
shack, and a waiting room about as large as an or- 
dinary ticket office. There was a rusty drum 
stove raised on bricks in its center, two benches, 
and a drinking tank with “Ice Water” painted on 
it invitingly, and not a drop inside. 

Backed up to the platform were two carryalls, 
each seating six besides the driver. The said 
drivers were perched on a baggage truck in the 
shade of the north end of the shack, and eyed the 
party shyly. But Aunt Millicent knew her 
ground, and went straight over to them. 

“How do you do, Flickers. And Jimmie too. 
I’m glad your father could spare you both. You 
got Mr. Abbott’s letter, didn’t you?” 

Flickers rose and the girls caught their first 
good look at one who was to be an important ac- 
cessory of the camp all summer long. He was 
tall and thin and as free from curves as a brand 
new slab from a mill. His overalls were too 
short, and his sleeves were rolled high above his 
tanned bony wrists. Thick, tawny hair fell in a 
circular fringe from beneath a crownless rim of 
straw. Afterwards the girls found out that 


170 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


Flickers never approved of hats, but he did like 
a shade for his eyes in the sun, so he compromised 
by removing the crown of his straw hat and wear- 
ing just the brim. 

This he raised now in answer to Mrs. Abbott’s 
greeting, and smiled the broadest, most sheepish 
smile imaginable — a smile that closed his eyes, 
widened his face, and showed where he had lost 
two front teeth. Jimmy, the younger brother, 
hid behind the far side of the shack. It devel- 
oped that he was to drive one carryall and 
Flickers the other, and so the party was to be 
conveyed up the mountain. 

“There’s a hotel on the other side of the val- 
ley,” Aunt Millicent explained on the side. 
“Mr. Jones, Flickers’ father, has the livery privi- 
lege for the station, and nothing in the way of 
news ever escapes him. I am sure he is eyeing 
us now from the hotel veranda through a spy- 
glass, and if he does miss anything Flickers 
will tell him all about it as soon as he gets 
back.” 

All unconscious of this diagnosis of the family 
characteristics, Flickers was unhitching the 
brown mares from the post and backing them into 
position. 


MAPLEDENE FARM 171 

“Did our goods arrive, Flickers?” asked Mrs. 
Abbott. 

“Yessum. Jimmie and me took ’em up last 
night and left ’em at the Doctor’s.” 

“That’s right. Climb in, children. We’ll 
have to divide up. Isabel, you take four with 
you and ride with Jimmie. It’s about three and 
a half miles.” 

“Where’s the village?” asked Polly, looking 
around at the barren road leading uphill from the 
station. 

“This here’s the village.” Flickers turned his 
gaze on her reproachfully. “Yonder’s the store. 
Mr. Butts keeps it, and he runs the post office 
and laundry too and ’tends to the express. Pa 
does everything Mr. Butts and Len can’t ’tend 
to, and I do everything Pa can’t ’tend to, and 
Jimmie he does everything I can’t ’tend to. 
That white house up the other way is where Mis’ 
Butts lives and the church and schoolhouse are 
farther along. There’s four other houses too, 
only you can’t see ’em in summer time, ’count 
the trees.” 

Hallie and Betty giggled and had to be bun- 
dled hastily into the other wagon before Flickers’ 
suspicions should be aroused. They would need 


172 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


his services, and the Jones’s sensibilities were 
easily ruffled. Aunt Millicent turned the topic 
of conversation deftly. 

“How are they all getting on at the Doctor’s 
place? Have any of the children come up from 
the city yet?” 

“Guy,” exclaimed Flickers, suddenly grown 
eloquent. “Guess there be. ’Bout seventeen 
more or less. All sorts and sizes. Mr. Butts 
says he guesses they got in the fifty-seven varie- 
ties all right, and then some. Doctor’s a fine fel- 
low. She’s fine too. When Len’s busy, I take 
things up for them from the store, and the mail 
too. They’ve got the old Yerrington place all 
fixed over. Used up twelve cans of white paint 
on it, big cans. I know, ’cause I carried it up 
and Pa put it in the farm journal that week. 
Papered it all through too, and shingled the red 
‘ell,’ and put white oilcloth all over the kitchen 
and the buttery. She’s a good one to hustle.” 

It was the first note of enthusiasm that he had 
sounded, but when the three and a half miles were 
covered and the teams turned up the maple bor- 
dered lane leading to Mapledene, Kate’s new do- 
main, the girls agreed with Flickers that she was 
a “good one.” 


MAPLEDENE FARM 


173 


The big two-story farmhouse stood far back 
from the road with rock maples in front of it and 
two “ells,” jutting out at right angles on each 
end. Throughout it had been made cheery and 
habitable with fresh paper and paint, white cur- 
tains, little white beds, and new rag rugs laid on 
painted floors. Kate was in her element and 
keenly enjoyed showing the girls and Mrs. Ab- 
bott every improvement that she and the Doctor 
had made. Two of the nurses from the clinic 
were on hand, and some of the mothers had come 
up with the first consignment of babies. 

Out in the vegetable garden the Doctor was 
working, putting up birch poles for his beans to 
run on. 

“You are to lunch here with us, or rather, have 
dinner, for we have ours in the middle of the day, 
country fashion,” said Kate, as they strolled out 
to meet the Doctor. “And afterwards you can 
tramp up the mountain to your own place. 
Flickers can drive over with your boxes and tents 
while you’re eating, and he and Jimmie will help 
you put them up.” 

“We ought to put our own tents up,” Vera 
protested. “When you’re real campfire girls 
you always have to learn how to put up your 


174 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


own tents, and you win an honor that way.” 

“That’s fine,” Polly answered firmly, “but 
we’re amateurs at it, every one of us, and we’d 
better have Flickers’ help. We don’t want to 
be down in the ruins in the wee sma’ hours of 
the morn, Nipper.” 

Back of the farmhouse was a pine grove and 
an old well with a long well sweep over it. Kate 
explained that she had all she could do to keep 
the four-year-olds from sliding down it most of 
the time, but the well was covered when not in 
use. After the well came a flagged walk under 
a rustic pergola made of white birch and covered 
over with grape vines. 

“We have all kinds of fruit, girls, and we’d 
love to share some of it with you. We’d give it 
to you, but this is all for the kiddies’ benefit, so 
we’re selling what we can’t use ourselves. Have 
to count the nickels and dimes, you know. We 
have two cows too, thanks to Mr. Phelps, and can 
sell you milk.” 

Polly looked at the animated figure beside her 
— dear old Kate, brown haired, rosy cheeked, 
tanned, brimful of energy and happiness, and 
encased in a brown and white checked apron over 
her white linen dress. 


MAPLEDENE FARM 175 

When they reached the doctor, he was asking 
Jimmy’s advice about the runner beans. 

“Kate Julian,” Polly said, “ I think you’re the 
luckiest girl in the world. If I ever do get mar- 
ried, some time away off, it will be because you 
and the Doctor are so happy together. You’re a 
standing advertisement for Cupid.” 

“Oh, go along, Polly,” Kate retorted, flushing. 
“We’re only mates, that’s all, — good running 
mates.” 

“Where is the Castle from here?” asked Mar- 
gery, coming towards them with her hands full 
of June roses, pink and white, and two blue- 
eyed youngsters in pink rompers escorting 
her. 

There seemed to be kiddies in pink and blue 
rompers all over the place, wherever one looked. 
They scudded out from under the bushes and ap- 
peared unexpectedly around the corners of the 
wood-shed and the corn-crib. The barn was full 
of them, in the empty horse stalls and in the hay 
mows. They sprawled on the lawn grass and 
kicked their heels blissfully in the air. They 
slept in hammocks and in odd comers of the wide 
porch, curled up like sleepy kittens. The 
youngest ones had their mothers with them. 


176 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


The whole upper floor had been changed into a 
big dormitory, and showed two long rows of lit- 
tle white beds. 

“We can manage thirty a week,” said Kate, 
“and that’s doing mighty well for the first year 
when everything is rather experimental. But 
Bob’s right in his element. What I’m hoping 
you girls can do is to take turns, two each week, 
or half a week, helping me make the kiddies 
happy. Doctor will look after their diet and 
general health, and I can manage to keep them 
fed and clean with the help I’ve brought up. 
But they can’t just roll around like this all day. 
They get tired of doing nothing and fight to- 
gether. They’ve got to be amused. I don’t care 
what you do, give them Montessori treatment, or 
summer kindergarten, or anything to keep them 
happy and interested, so they won’t wander down 
the road or tumble into the well when we’re not 
watching them. Bennie’s here with his baby, 
Polly.” 

Polly said at once that she must see Bennie be- 
fore they started for the camp, but he had gone 
after berries with some of the older children, and 
she was only rewarded with a glimpse of Nedda 
peeling vegetables in the shade of the pergola 


MAPLEDENE FARM 177 

with her baby in a wash basket beside her, kicking 
and talking to itself. 

Fhckers and Jimmy had gone ahead with the 
tents and supplies. 

“I sent over a little two-burner oil stove I had,” 
Kate said at the last minute, as they were ready 
to hike up the mountain road. “It’s all veiy 
well to talk about your open fires after you get 
on to the knack of them, but you may want some- 
thing quickly and this will come in handy on wet 
nights when the wood doesn’t want to burn. 
Which ones am I to expect down here to help me 
to-morrow?” 

Margery and Isabel wanted to try first, and 
as the other girls all declared that Polly could 
not be spared, it was agreed that these two should 
be at Mapledene Farm from nine till three every 
day for a week, and earn five dollars each, to go 
towards the expenses of the camp. 

“Here’s something that will come in handy,” 
the Doctor said, handing up a box of empty am- 
munition shells. “I brought a lot of these with 
me on the advice of an old hunter, for water- 
proof match boxes. You’ll probably need them 
when you start out tramping. Don’t forget the 
forestry warnings. If lost follow three trees in 


178 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


a line or a running brook, and don’t leave any 
fires to smoulder. Smother them in earth. I 
guess that’s all for now. If you need us, you 
can light a signal fire on the big rock by the lake 
shore.” 

“Oh, I had forgotten that we had a lake,” ex- 
claimed Polly joyously. “We can swim, then, 
girls.” 

“Where did you suppose the boys went canoe- 
ing, goosie?” Aunt Millicent laughed. “Up in 
the air? It’s a good-sized lake we think at the 
Castle. Agoonah Lake, the Indians called it, 
but we say Loon Lake. Good-bye, Kate. 
Wish us luck and safety. I’ve got quite a brood 
on my hands.” 

Kate and the pink and blue kiddies made a 
group of color on the green lawn as the campers 
started off on their mountain hike. They looked 
like a big flower bed, Polly thought. She looked 
back often to wave her hand and smile until they 
turned off the dusty main road into a path, single 
file, that led up through tall pines. It was a 
shortcut over the mountain to Loon Lake, and 
they wanted to arrive before the sun got low. 

It might have comforted the heart of the old 
white-haired king, the king that sat blindly in the 


MAPLEDENE FARM 


179 


sun with his riches around him and no love to 
comfort him, if he could have seen these toddlers 
from city streets out in God’s own land, happy 
and growing well. 

“Oh, I do hope that Grandfather can get him 
here,” she said to herself. “It might mean a 
hundred kiddies more.” 


CHAPTER XVI 


PITCHING CAMP 

The boys had driven around by the longer 
route, taking the old timber road up over the 
mountain, but Aunt Millicent was certain she 
could find her own way by the shorter cut. 

“The Castle lies just off to the west there, 
girls,” she told them as they stopped for the first 
breathing spell. “You can see it from here in 
the autumn after the leaves fall. It has two 
high square Norman towers. What’s the mat- 
ter, Crullers?” 

Crullers stood with uplifted face, eyes closed, 
and a smile playing about her mouth. 

“It’s the wind in the pines,” she said. “Don’t 
you all love it, girls,. swishing back and forth? I 
do. I hope we get a camp site near the pines.” 

“We’ve left the selection of that to you girls,” 
Aunt Millicent answered. “As long as the boys 
always camped on the south shore of the lake, 
and found it the best location, it seemed as if it 


PITCHING CAMP 


181 


might suit you too, so I told Flickers to drive 
over there. You can choose for yourselves 
where you’d like the tents pitched. It is high 
and dry with a good water supply, and no under- 
brush near. I told the boys to wait until we got 
there.” 

They went on up the winding path through the 
great cool aisles of pines, Polly and Mrs. Abbott 
leading. There was no luggage to carry and 
they made good time. 

Suddenly they came out on a rocky ridge of 
land, about two miles from Mapledene, with the 
lake lying below them. It looked as smooth as 
a mirror in the midday heat, although the breeze 
lifted the tall water reeds and grasses at its mar- 
gin. Here the path became a zigzag affair, lead- 
ing them down along a strip of sandy beach, then 
up over the ridge, where they had to clamber 
across the trunks of fallen trees, or push back 
willows and alders to get by, until at last a hail 
came to them from a high point of land ahead, 
and Flickers stood there waving his hatbrim at 
them. 

“It’s up here,” he called. 

They climbed up the slope eagerly, one after 
the other, but Crullers lost her footing, and 


182 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


would have rolled all the way down had not Nat- 
alie caught her by the dress. Even Isabel lost 
some of her dignity over that last stretch, and 
landed on the plateau breathless and laughing 
with the rest. They all were enthusiastic over 
the place. The woods fell back in a semi-circle, 
leaving a sort of plateau that sloped gradually 
to the beach. All about them lay the forest, — 
pines, oaks, chestnuts, with now and then the 
slender, glistening stem' of a silver birch or the 
ruddy bark of a mountain ash. 

Down along the shore were huge trunks of 
dead trees, grotesque and heavy, but promising 
well for firewood. Before them lay the lake with 
its ever-changing face of beauty. Before the 
summer was half over, they had all grown to love 
it, the face of Agoonah, as Polly called it. High 
up in the mountain’s lap it lay, wooded heights 
rising hundreds of feet above it on all sides. 
Their reflections turned the lake into a glimpse 
of another land. 

“If you think you’re too near civilization all 
you have to do is take your canoe and go across 
to the island and camp there,” said Mrs. Abbott. 
“It belongs to the cranes and muskrats. The 
boys used to camp there often in the fall, during 


PITCHING CAMP 183 

the hunting season. Now, the first question is, 
where shall we put the tents?” 

All of the girls favored the plateau. There 
was a prettier spot farther along the shore where 
the pines came down to meet the water, but in a 
thunder storm the plateau would be safer from 
falling boughs. So the plateau was officially 
chosen for the camp site. It was not over half 
an acre in extent and there was sufficient shade 
from the tall fringe of trees at the forest edge. 

Flickers and Jimmie went at the tents and 
the girls at the boxes and bundles of supplies, but 
in the excitement of tent raising they all deserted 
the commissary department and went over to 
help the boys drive in tent pins and hoist the tent. 
After the big tent was up Jimmy vanished into 
the woods and came back with some big fir 
houghs. 

“Going to nail ’em up in front,” he said. 

“Oh, Jimmie, you’ve got a poet’s soul,” Polly 
exclaimed. “It’s the final touch, isn’t it, girls? 
Like a flag raising.” 

“Now, what about a fireplace?” said Aunt Mil- 
licent. 

“There’s one down on the shore we boys use for 
cooking fish,” said Flickers. “What sort of a one 


184 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 

do you folks want? Just stones put around in 
a circle, or do you want the kind you swing a pot 
over?” 

“The kind you swing a pot over, I think,” said 
Polly. “To begin with, anyway. Perhaps we 
could build a big rock fireplace later on.” 

Aunt Millicent took charge of the beds and 
bedding, with Peggie to help. Polly and Nat- 
alie went at the kitchen supplies, and the little 
ones were delegated as woodgatherers. Isabel 
began putting up shelves. It was warm even on 
the borders of the lake, but they did not mind the 
heat. When the first tent shelter was up, their 
traveling dresses, — serge skirts and white mid- 
dies, — were changed for the camp suits of Rus- 
sian crash, middies and bloomers. They were 
all in what Betty called “woodsy colors,” soft 
oak tans, dull mossy greens, misty grays, and 
blue as soft as a wild dove’s wings. 

“I think we look awfully nice,” Vera ex- 
claimed, eyeing the rest admiringly. “I like 
these suits better than serge bloomers and white 
middies. This way we’re all different, and it 
gives a chance for temperament to show up. 
Polly, you’re an inspiration in that lichen brown. 
It’s just like a moth’s wing.” 


PITCHING CAMP 


185 


“Is it?” Polly laughed, rolling up her sleeves 
and digging out a mess of camp kettles from the 
box. “Well, I don’t feel one bit like a moth, or 
a butterfly either. I’m a wild bee on a honey 
trail. Oh, wouldn’t it be great if we could find 
some honey, girls? How do you, Aunt Milly?” 

“I buy mine,” Aunt Millicent replied. “It 
saves time, and neither Takeshi nor your uncle 
would follow any honey trails out here for me. 
All you have to do, I believe, is to watch for a 
bee to pass by, and just follow him home.” 

“Welcome used to tell me that,” said Polly 
thoughtfully. “I wonder what you do when you 
catch up with him.” 

“Pull his teeth out,” Betty answered seriously. 
“Somebody help me with the dining table. I’ve 
just found Polly’s folding table, but I don’t 
know how the cap fits. Do you stretch this on 
tree trunks, Polly?” 

“There were uprights that should have come 
with it,” Polly told her. “You sink them deep 
in the ground, I think, and put the canvas over 
the top. The tops of the uprights fit into 
pockets on each end, and clamp in.” 

“Clamp in?” repeated Betty, struggling with 
the aforesaid uprights. “You’ll have to take a 


186 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


hammer and nail these. The whole thing would 
collapse if you tried to load one of our dinners 
on it. This is made for the serving of capsuled 
food, Polly.” 

“I think we’ll get Flickers and Jimmie to build 
us one,” Polly remarked hopefully. “A good 
long table with planks and cross pieces under- 
neath. For tonight why couldn’t we take a 
couple of these planks and put across two bar- 
rels?” 

There were three good-sized tents besides the 
cook tent, which was of the shelter model, with 
a broad flap that lifted up from the front and tied 
to two young trees. The boys had selected a 
location where the trees could be utilized. Polly 
had figured on putting four cots in a tent, and on 
using two tents to sleep in, and one for a sort of 
living tent with room for the chaperon’s cot. 
But three cots were as many as would fit com- 
fortably in a tent and leave room to turn around. 

“One at a time might get up and dress,” Yera 
suggested, “and the others wait their turns. 
Polly, I wonder you didn’t find some sort of fold- 
ing or hanging bed arrangements for us. I 
think I shall build me a nest in a treetop.” 

“It’s all right,” Aunt Millieent declared, com- 


PITCHING CAMP 


187 


ing out into the open air, hair rumpled and face 
flushed. “Polly, Peggie, and I will take one 
tent, and the rest of you can choose lots.” 

“Don’t let Betty get in the same tent with 
Hallie,” sang out Pipes. “The rest of us will 
never get any sleep.” 

“I’m going with Nat and Isabel,” Betty re- 
plied decisively. “Vera’s going with Hallie and 
Pipes.” 

“Where are you going to put me?” asked 
Crullers plaintively. “In the canoe?” 

“No, precious old pal, we won’t put you in 
any canoe,” Polly assured her. “You’re so 
fairy-like, Crullers, that we just forgot you. I 
know you can squeeze in with us some place. 
We’ll take turns having an extra cot in each one 
of the tents if necessary.” 

“I’ll go with Betty,” Crullers said. “If it’s 
too crowded we’ll fold my cot up in the day- 
time. Or, I know, put it crossways at the hack 
of the tent, Betty, with yours, feet to feet.” 

“Fine,” Betty agreed. “Like the bodies in 
the catacombs, or do they stand up straight? I 
forget, but it doesn’t matter. Oh, girls, last 
summer, when we camped up in Vermont, we 
came across the strangest old burial ground with 


188 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


the gravestones made of a sort of sandstone. 
One of them had this verse on it: 

“ ‘Here lies Orlando Tinkham Tift, 

Of intellect surprising. 

Beloved by all, he’s sure to cut 
A figure at the rising.’ ” 

“Betty Morris,” exclaimed Vera. “You 
ought to be ducked for that. Wait till I get 
you out in the canoe!” 

“Don’t scrap,” Polly pleaded. “We’ll never 
get done if you do. Betty, help me put up these 
hanging shelves in the cook tent. You just slip 
the wooden slats inside the cloth, see? I want 
to look at the fireplace the boys are building.” 

Proudly, and sheepishly too, Flickers and Jim- 
mie exhibited their handiwork. They had car- 
ried up big flat stones from the shore, and had 
arranged them for a fireplace opposite the cook 
tent. Then two forked sticks were driven into 
the ground about four feet apart with a strong, 
straight stick laid across them for pot hooks to 
hang from. Hallie had advised plenty of pot 
hooks as they served more purposes than one. 

“We’ll fix up a rock fireplace where you can 
build bonfires if you want it,” Flickers said. 


PITCHING CAMP 


189 


“Or there’s a big rock down on the shore that you 
can use. That would be better, ’cause this time 
of the year everything’s dry and Mr. Butts’s 
second cousin’s fire warden, so we have to watch 
out. This one’ll cook all right for now, won’t 
it?” 

“Splendidly,” Polly told him. “And we’ve 
got in some dry wood, to start with to-night.” 

“Well, you’d better pile some of it in a corner 
of the tent,” advised Flickers. “Supposing it 
comes up a rain, then what? Though it don’t 
matter with birches. You can burn them wet or 
dry. Not that it’s likely to rain, but it might. 
Pa says to always be prepared for the unex- 
pected, then when it does hit you all you have to 
do is hunch your shoulders and blink, because 
you was prepared. Guess that’s all we can do 
for you to-night, ain’t it?” 

“That’s all I think of. But, Flickers — ” 
Polly paused wondering how to impress it on 
his memoiy. She had remembered suddenly all 
that Aunt Millicent had said of Flickers’ pro- 
pensities for disappearing days at a time just 
when you were needing him. “You’ll surely 
bring up our mail every day and come for gro- 
cery orders, won’t you? And we’ll pay you fif- 


190 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


teen cents an hour when you work for us. How 
is that?” - 

Flickers grinned approvingly. So did Jim- 
mie, and, pocketing their earnings for one day, 
they drove down the mountain road, back to the 
village, to tell Mr. Jones and Mr. Butts all about 
the new camp and just what was in the boxes. 

It was sundown before the campers sat dow T n 
to rest. Everything was unpacked and in place 
even to the wire nails and folding canvas water 
buckets. The cots were made up, each with its 
gray blanket that was to do double service. 
Later on they hoped to go on a tramp to the 
top of Baldy Knob, the highest nearby mountain, 
and sleep in the open over night, so the blankets 
had eyelets to lace to their sleeping bags for that 
occasion. 

The tents had floor coverings of khaki duck, 
although Aunt Millicent said she was certain the 
boys would have to lay floors for them, about a 
foot above the ground. 

“It’s a good dry spot, and I don’t believe we’d 
have any snake visitors, but still I’d rather have 
the floors. In case of rainstorms, we’re safe 
from dampness.” 

“Altogether, though, it does begin to look 


PITCHING CAMP 


191 


real,” Polly said happily, dropping full length 
on the grass. “And I’m hungry as a wolf. 
We haven’t drawn lots yet to see who is to look 
after the cooking and dishwashing, the wood 
gathering, and the tent cleaning.” 

“Let’s do it in the morning,” Natalie coaxed. 
“I don’t feel as if I could meditate on another 
thing until I’ve eaten and slept out in this moun- 
tain air.” 

Aunt Millicent had gone over to the cook tent. 
Now she came back to the circle on the grass with 
what Crullers called a concentrated expression. 

“Has anybody seen the matches?” 

Each member of the circle looked hopefully 
at the next one, but there was only silence and 
the truth slowly dawned on them. There were 
no matches. 

“Don’t you know, we were going to order them 
at the village store in Montalban,” said Polly, 
“and when we saw how little the village was we 
never thought of going to the store. Haven’t 
we a single one, Aunt Milly?” 

“Not one.” 

“I’ll run after the boys,” Betty proposed. 

“Run three and a half miles down the moun- 
tain? It’s sunset now, Betty.” 


192 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


Vera stood up suddenly. “I know what to do. 
Let’s twirl a stick in dry. rotting wood, and it 
will light.” 

It really didn’t seem possible a stick could 
stand so much twirling and still refuse to ignite. 
Each one tried her hand at twirling. Vera told 
them that all you had to do was to hold the stick 
very firmly and steadily, and then roll it rapidly 
between your palms, keeping the twirling end 
in the dry, porous wood. 

Polly remembered distinctly having read some- 
where that if you rubbed two sticks together they 
burst into a radiant flame. So, patiently and 
vigorously, they all worked down on the beach 
over the dry driftwood, never realizing what a 
curious picture they made kneeling there on the 
sand in the sunset glow with the lake behind 
them, reflecting each beautiful sky tint in its tiny 
wavelets. 

Suddenly there came a hail from the bank, a 
curious hail unlike any they had ever heard. 
Standing out in the open space before the tents 
was the figure of a woman, bareheaded, her curly 
iron-gray hair hanging loosely around her 
tanned, strongly featured face. She had a head 
like one of the old sibyls, Peggie declared later, 


PITCHING CAMP 


193 


but there was no scroll of fate in her hand, noth- 
ing but an oak staff nearly as tall as herself. 
Her dress was made of blue jean like overall 
goods, cut in one piece and tied around the 
waist with a piece of rope. Beside her was a 
shaggy haired dog, quite as nondescript as she 
was. 

“It’s Sarepta,” Mrs. Abbott said. “How did 
she ever find out that we were here so soon. Be 
nice to her, girls. She’s perfectly harmless, only 
a little queer.” 

“What you doing down there?” Sarepta called, 
shading her eyes and peering down at them. It 
was the expression of her face that held one’s 
attention. Queer she might be, but there was 
wisdom and strength in her features and a whim- 
sical glint in her eyes as though she, too, had 
looked at the world and found it good. 

Nobody knew her real age. For years she 
had lived up on Baldy Knob in a house that was 
little more than a “leanto.” In summer, she al- 
ways closed her door and moved far up the moun- 
tain to a cave where she slept when it was in- 
clement, otherwise she used a bed of leaves and 
moss between two great rocks in a deer wallow. 

Several times Mr. and Mrs. Butts had per- 


194 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


suaded the county authorities that Sarepta 
needed looking after, but some bird of the air 
must have carried the matter, for when they 
traveled up the mountain to find her she had 
vanished. 

“Land alive,” she told Mrs. Abbott one day, 
the previous summer, “can’t a body live out of 
doors without being called crazy? Pretty do- 
ings. I ain’t a mite crazier ’n you artist folk, 
trudging over the mountain to hunt places to 
paint. I know the prettiest spots up here too, 
but I ain’t going to tell where they be. Nobody 
knows but me’n the deer. Yes, Nicodemus 
knows too, but he won’t tell, will ye, Nick?” 

And Nick, the big shaggy dog that seemed her 
only friend, would wag his tail and cock his ears 
appreciatively. 

She had granted her friendship to the Abbotts 
from the beginning of their stay at the Castle, 
and now she smiled happily at all the brood 
gathered around Mrs. Abbott, as they came up 
the path from the beach. 

“I asked the boys to let me know when you 
come, and Jimmie let out a holler when they 
drove down the mountain. But I knew all along 
you was coming.” 


PITCHING CAMP 


195 


“How did you know, Sarepta?” asked Aunt 
Millicent, kindly. 

The old face seemed lit up by a hidden fire. 

“Had a dream,” Sarepta answered, lifting her 
palm high in the air towards the lake. “Dreamt 
I saw a signal fire right over there.” 

“Oh, did you dream where there were any 
matches?” Crullers asked eagerly, almost push- 
ing Betty over in her anxiety to see the speaker. 
“We need some terribly.” 

“Always carry matches,” Sarepta said calmly, 
diving deep in the pocket of her blue jean dress 
and bringing up a tin box with a cover to it. 
“Have to be careful carrying loose matches. 
Start forest fires. Most folks don’t care, hut I 
love trees, and it hurts ’em fearfully when they 
burn. Here’s matches for ye.” 

The girls stared as if fascinated at the withered 
hand holding out these treasures to them. After 
half an hour of twirling and worrying, here 
Sarepta appeared and handed out matches as if 
they were pine needles. 

“You’re just an angel,” Polly exclaimed. 
“Just an angel. Miss Jones — ” 

“Call me Sarepta,” Miss Jones interrupted 
firmly. 


196 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“Sarepta, then. We were having an awful 
time trying to get a fire started, and thought 
we’d have to eat crackers and cheese for supper. 
Can’t you stay and have something really good 
now?” 

Sarepta eyed her suspiciously for a minute. 
Nobody ever invited her to stay for dinner. She 
was the waif of Baldy Knob, known to every 
child and grown person for miles, and feared by 
them. But something she saw in Polly’s big 
brown eyes reassured her. Here there was good- 
fellowship and gratitude too, and she felt the 
invitation was given in good faith. She pushed 
back her hair and smoothed the front of her 
wrinkled, wood-stained gown. 

“Thank ye just the same,” she said, “I guess 
not to-night. I only came down to see the signal 
fire lit up and to make sure my dream had come 
true.” 

It was hard to say which the girls enjoyed 
most that first night out in the open, the prepar- 
ing and eating of the evening meal, or the build- 
ing and lighting of the big campfire down on the 
huge flat rock by the lake shore. They gathered 
around it, the firelight dancing and throwing 
strange grotesque shadows on land and water. 


PITCHING CAMP 


197 


Crullers and Betty rambled off by themselves 
while the rest were singing, and Sarepta stood 
apart, watching the group around the flames. 
Finally, as the girls were singing, they saw her 
lift one hand as if in benediction, and slip away 
among the shadows. 

When only the embers were left, the campers 
prepared for their first night’s rest. All was 
quiet in the camp for a while, and then there 
came a subdued shriek from the tent where Isabel 
lay with Natalie, Betty, and Crullers. 

Aunt Millicent arose, wrapped a kimono 
around her, and went over to find out what the 
trouble was, Polly hurrying behind her, all ready 
to face any emergency. 

Isabel was sitting upright, with her knees 
drawn up to her chin, and her blanket wrapped 
close around her. 

“My bed is just full of burdock stickers,” she 
said. “And those two over there are lighting 
matches under the bedclothes.” 

“Oh, no,” Betty returned sweetly. “We’re 
training fireflies to use in future emergencies, 
Mrs. Abbott. See?” 

Out from under the blankets the two culprits 
produced a couple of empty bottles, and in the 


198 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


bottles now and then glowed the pale fitful light 
of fireflies. 

“Crullers, you come over and sleep in our 
tent,” Polly coaxed laughingly, but Crullers re- 
fused. Upon her promising faithfully to be 
quiet and train no more for that night, Mrs. Ab- 
bott and Polly departed, and peace finally de- 
scended on the camp. 


CHAPTER XVII 


THE CASTLE DOMAIN 

That first week in camp had its trials as well 
as its compensations, according to Isabel, who 
was the first to object to the demands of outdoor 
life. She had never been a very good cam- 
paigner, and here she dreaded the early rising, 
the skirmish for breakfast, and the long tramp 
down the mountain trail to Mapledene Farm. 
For it had fallen upon her and Margery to help 
Kate with the kiddies this first week. 

“You just ought to stay here and hustle for 
firewood the way we do,” Betty and Crullers told 
her forcibly. “We bring in bundles on our 
backs.” 

“Yes, or cook,” Hallie sighed. “Peggie and 
I are the scullery maids. We wash the dishes, 
pare vegetables, and get down on our hands and 
knees and blow the dying embers into gay, 
crackling life again.” 

“An it please your royal highness,” Natalie 


200 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


sang out, her head poked around the tent flap, 
and one hand waving a canvas water bucket in 
the air, “we are the chambermaids. We tidy the 
tents, change the towels, carry fresh water, and 
make the beds. Don’t we, Nipper ?” 

“Next week it will be our turn at Kate’s kin- 
dergarten,” Vera answered cheerfully. “You 
and I, Nat, will teach her ladyship true heroism.” 

“Just wait till you find yourself with thirty- 
two children to amuse, each one wanting to do 
something different at the same identical mo- 
ment in about five different languages or dia- 
lects,” Margery said. “Heroism is the right 
word to use. I never appreciated before all that 
Doctor Elliot and Kate were doing.” 

Flickers kept his word valiantly for two whole 
days, appearing bright and early at the camp 
ready for work. Polly said she knew he would 
be ill if he kept up the record, but when the 
third day came, all predictions were fulfilled. 
Flickers was missing. Jimmie drove up that 
afternoon to take the grocery order for Mr. 
Butts. He said he hadn’t seen Flickers around 
any where, but he kind of thought most likely 
he’d gone fishing. 

“I don’t blame Flickers for going fishing a 


THE CASTLE DOMAIN 


201 


day like this,” Polly declared. It was a fitful 
day, now sunny, now with a low-hanging cloud 
clipping past them with a dash of rain. “Why 
don’t we go fishing, girls? There’s a place I dis- 
covered when we were in swimming yesterday, a 
point of land where the rocks project out over 
the lake, and we could perch up there and fish. 
It’s only about half a mile down the shore from 
here.” 

“Live bait, or circus brand, Polly?” Crullers 
inquired. 

“Live. Wait till I find something to dig with. 
We can find plenty of worms around the roots 
of old trees.” 

It took nearly half an hour to get out the 
fishing tackle and prepare for the expedition. 
Polly and Betty found plenty of bait and at last 
all excepting Mrs. Abbott trailed down the shore 
path. 

“I must write some letters to-day, children,” 
she said. “So run along, and bring your dinner 
back with you.” 

Confidently they approached the little rock 
peninsula; but lo, at a turn in the shore, they 
caught a glimpse of it and found it already oc- 
cupied. Flickers, the recreant Flickers, lay 


202 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


thereon, flat on his back, his hat brim carefully 
adjusted to shade his eyes, in his hands a paper 
covered book. Arranged conveniently within 
arm’s reach were three pronged sticks whereon 
rested Flickers’ fishpoles. At their indignant 
hail, he sat u p and grinned down at them re- 
proachfully. 

“Pretty good fish running to-day,” he called 
happily. “I’ve got a fair sized string already. 
Coming up?” 

“If you won’t mind us, Flickers,” Polly an- 
swered, with distinct sarcasm, but it passed over 
Flickers’ hatbrim even as the summer rain clouds 
over the top of Baldy Knob. 

“Land, I don’t mind. Come right along. 
There’s plenty and more too. I like to come up 
here, set my lines, and read till the bells ring.” 

The girls hastened up the rocks. 

“What bells?” they asked eagerly. 

“See there!” cried Flickers proudly, pointing 
to the ends of the poles. “See the bells? When 
there’s a bite, it jerks the end of the pole, and the 
bell tinkles. Sometimes they wake me up.” 

“Do you ever sell the fish?” asked Crullers 
delicately. Her eye was always on the larder, 
but Flickers shook his head. 



“Pretty Good Fish Running Today,” He Called 












•* 






















THE CASTLE DOMAIN 


203 


“Why, no. I’m just catching these for you 
folks. Ain’t I working for you?” 

“We must let him alone,” Polly told them 
while he waded out to untangle Betty’s line fast 
hooked into an alder. “Flickers is ’way ahead 
of us in foresight and wisdom.” 

Towards the end of the week, a letter arrived 
from Uncle Thurlow announcing that he and 
Takeshi would arrive the following Tuesday. A 
few of the students might come up beforehand, 
he said, and Pippino’s family would be there by 
Monday to take possession of the Castle and 
clean up the garden. 

On Saturday Aunt Millicent proposed a 
tramp over from the camp to open the place and 
look it over before the arrivals. It was nearly 
two miles from Agoonah Lake. They took the 
old-time trail the boys used down to the main 
road that led up from the village. 

“Hikers all,” Polly called merrily, surveying the 
band as they stood by the trail dressed in bloomers 
and middies with long staffs in their hands. 

“ ‘How shall I my true love know. 

From another one? 

By his cockle hat and staff. 

And his sandal shoon.’ ** 


204 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“Well, I just wish I had on ‘sandal shoon,’ ” 
Vera protested, sitting by the roadside and tak- 
ing off her high boots. “I want soft moccasins. 
I don’t care for snake bites or anything so long 
as I can go light footed through the forest 
green.” 

“It isn’t very far now. Why, you’ll have to 
walk five times as far as this over to King’s Peak, 
but we’ll stay over night there and you can try 
your sleeping bags.” 

“Why do they call it King’s Peak, Aunt 
Milly?” Polly asked. “I always want to know 
how places receive their names.” 

“Because it is said that, years and years ago, 
the lost Dauphin of France passed through here 
on his way from the Adirondacks, and that he 
stayed up there on the mountain in camp with 
the Indians. They called him Lazarre, but to 
the whites he was Eleazar Williams. You know, 
girls, one reason why we are fond of this coun- 
try is because Mr. Abbott was born and brought 
up on Lake George. He can remember his 
grandmother telling him how the Indians used 
to come down from the North Mountains, selling 
baskets of sweet grass. Some of them told of 
an old Indian princess who had an ivory missal 


THE CASTLE DOMAIN 


205 


bound in gold, and on it the royal crest of France 
and the name ‘Louis.’ ” 

“Was he the real Louis, Aunt Milly?” 

“How do I know?” Mrs. Abbott smiled. “It 
might have been true. It was believed that the 
little prince escaped from the Bastile with his 
tutor, and fled to England and from there to New 
France. Those who could remember have left 
a record of this man Eleazar Williams, telling 
how he was brought among the tribes as a little 
boy by a white man, and the Indians were told 
he was a prince. Who knows? For the sake 
of romance I like to think the son of Mary An- 
toinette roamed over our beautiful mountains 
and left his royal stamp upon them. 

“There are lingering trails of romance all over 
this northern New York country. There is a 
roadside tavern on the way to King’s Peak 
where it is said Aaron Burr often put up, and 
they show an old inkwell used by Daniel Web- 
ster, and some pewter mugs that Winfield Scott 
and some of his staff drank from. Under the 
big elm in front of the house is an old mounting- 
stone. The initials ‘A. H.’ cut into it, stand for 
Alexander Hamilton, they say.” 

“Just as if he ever had time to stop and hew 


206 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


them into the rock,” Betty said doubtfully. 
“Initials are awfully deceptive things anyway. 
Last year while we were in Vermont, Nipper 
found some carved on an old, old bridge, and they 
read ‘G. W.,’ so we thought of course they stood 
for George Washington. Every good Ameri- 
can thinks those initials stand for that name al- 
ways, but this time they didn’t. They meant 
‘Go west.’ Yes, sirree; didn’t they, Nipper? 
There was an old man lived in a shack along the 
side of the river, and he said the road wasn’t safe 
along the east shore, so he had just carved that 
sign. And when we suggested that maybe some 
people wouldn’t know what it stood for, he asked 
us what in tunket it could stand for but ‘Go 
west.’ ” 

“Betty, you’re delightful,” Aunt Millicent 
laughed, “but just look ahead. Doesn’t anyone 
see gray towers?” 

“ Tour gray walls and four gray towers. 

Overlook a space of flowers. 

And the silent isle embowers 
The Lady of Shalott/ ” 

chanted Betty, with a roguish expression on her 
sunburned face. 


THE CASTLE DOMAIN 


207 


“There are only two towers at our Castle, but 
we have an overgrown terrace, an old rose gar- 
den and a sun dial. No skeletons in armor 
though.” 

“Polly likes skeletons,” Natalie remarked 
mildly, but Polly was ahead and out of hearing 
so the challenge passed unheeded. 

They came down the winding forest road to 
the Castle domain. Old orchards compassed it 
on three sides, and beyond these were fields of 
daisies up to the edge of the birchwoods. Still 
farther on, past the slender white birches, rose 
pines and red oaks and thickets of hazel and 
mountain laurel. 

The front approach was a joy to any nature 
lover’s heart. Only the gray towers were visible 
from the roadway, visible above the tapering tops 
of huge Norway pines. The square white posts 
at the entrance gates were old and worm-eaten, 
half toppling over, and covered with clambering 
woodbine. All around the grounds was a high 
rock wall backed up with young birches and hazel 
bushes. It was too tall to see over, but after one 
had passed beyond the old posts up the curving 
driveway, three deep terraces, one above another, 
became visible, rising to the steps of the Castle. 


208 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 

Below them stood the four enormous Norway 
pines like stately sentinels. 

The girls had never before seen such pines as 
these. They were not tall and slender like the 
white pines of the west, nor with bare trunks 
branched only at the top, like the yellow pines 
of the south. Polly thought these must be hem- 
locks, they were so broad and had such splendid 
sweeping boughs, touching the ground on all 
sides. Investigation proved two to be hemlocks, 
and two to be Norway pines with beautiful large 
cones and heavy glossy needles. 

Bose bushes grew rankly along the terraces. 
Uncle Thurlow did not approve of gardeners. 
He said they defaced the beauties of nature, so 
Takeshi was the only person allowed to produce 
any landscape effects around the Castle. The 
grass grew uncut all summer long and the bor- 
ders of hardy annuals grew with it, happy and 
prospering. It was daisy time now, and the 
girls wandered about, knee deep in the white 
flowers. Crullers found a place where blackcap 
raspberries grew along the stone wall and 
perched herself within easy reach, gathering 
enough in a folding pail they had brought, to 
provide some for lunch. 


THE CASTLE DOMAIN 209 


Up in the apple trees some birds trilled re- 
bukingly at the invaders, and one big black cat- 
bird hopped along the grass after them, scold- 
ing all the way. 

Aunt Millicent walked up the overgrown path 
to the side porch and unlocked the door. At 
each end of the house on the south side was a 
round gray tower built of the native rock. The 
entire house had been constructed of it, and 
within they found a great living room, wains- 
coted and beamed in oak. 

“All of the rock is from the quarry below here, 
and the timber came from the sawmill down at 
Blow-me-down Pond,” Aunt Millicent ex- 
plained, showing them through the place. 

“Where is that. Aunt Milly?” Polly seized on 
the odd name at once. 

“The mill? Farther down the mountain. 
You follow our river until it comes to the big 
dam and there’s the mill. They call it Blow-me- 
down Pond because years back some chap lived 
there whose mill was a ramshackle wreck that 
blew down every now and then. So he kept 
adding a timber here and a brace there, but never 
rebuilding. Finally there came an autumn gale, 
and some one driving by during the storm found 


210 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


him sitting out on a rail fence, smoking placidly. 
‘Wind’s been at me off and on for years,’ he 
said. ‘Now I just moved out and told the pesky 
thing to go ahead and blow down, if it wanted 
to.’ We’ll have to go down there some day for 
a jaunt. Let’s open up these windows and let 
some fresh air in, girls.” 

They rambled all over the building, looked 
into the studio high in one of the towers, and saw 
the splendid view over the great valley with its 
distant rim of purple mountains. 

The living-room was the acknowledged tri- 
umph, though, of the whole Castle. It stretched 
across the entire front. There were all manner 
of seats built into odd nooks, rows of unexpected 
bookshelves inviting one to rest and browse, a 
fireplace into which barrels could have been piled, 
and sunlight flooding all of it. 

At the back the house was built around an 
inner garden like the early Californian and 
Mexican patios. A fountain spouted four jets 
high in the air here, and the girls were delighted 
at the low encircling Roman seat where one 
could sit and trail one’s finger tips in the cool 
water. 

“Oh, I do think whoever built and planned 


THE CASTLE DOMAIN 


211 


this must have loved beautiful things,” Peggie 
exclaimed. 

“It was some one who loved beautiful things,” 
Aunt Millicent returned, her face full of tender- 
ness; “poor Lindsay Phelps!” 

It was on the tip of Polly’s tongue to tell 
what she knew of Lindsay Phelps, but Betty 
was taking off her shoes and stockings prepara- 
tory to wading in the fountain and was calling 
on the others to follow her example. After the 
long mountain climb, it was too tempting to re- 
sist. 

“Run along, all of you, for we still have the 
walk back,” Aunt Millicent said. “We can 
lunch on berries, but think of the dinner wait- 
ing.” 

“Um-m-m!” breathed Betty and Natalie to- 
gether. Crullers looked self-conscious and a bit 
proud. 

“We could eat it this minute,” said Natalie, 
“but the fireless cooker is doing its work, isn’t 
it, Crullers? You’re sure you didn’t forget to 
put the things in, aren’t you?” 

“Sure, Nat,” Crullers declared. “I fixed 
everything just right.” 

While the rest had hurried to clear away the 


212 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


breakfast dishes and straighten up the tents, 
she had been delegated to look after the scal- 
loped potatoes and the Brown Betty pudding. 
With broiled ham and fresh biscuits, they would 
have a feast when they returned from their 
tramp. 

Accordingly all the way on the return trip, 
they discussed the special charms of that dinner, 
the advantages of fireless cookers in general, and 
of Crullers’ method of making Brown Betty pud- 
ding in particular. 

“Dear old Crullers, whom we all jump on and 
blame for everything that goes wrong,” Polly 
said, throwing one arm over Crullers’ nearest 
shoulder. “We never even guessed that you 
could cook, Crullers, dear, until you explained 
the intricacies and mysteries of scalloped potatoes 
a la Crullers to us.” 

“Oh, it’s easy enough if you only have to put 
it in a box like that,” said Crullers comfortably. 
“Of course in a real oven you must watch them 
and be careful they don’t burn.” 

“Oh, rare Crullers, how I do love thee,” Betty 
intoned sweetly from the rear. “Didst put loads 
of lemon peel and raisins in thy Brown Betty 
pudding? I was named for Brown Betties and 


THE CASTLE DOMAIN 213 

I know whereof they should be made, gentle dam- 
sel.” 

“I put in a whole box of raisins and not too 
much toast, and then little dabs of brown sugar 
here and there and melted butter and cinna- 
mon — ” 

“Cease, cease!” Betty waved her back to si- 
lence. “I’m so hungry now I can hardly keep 
my weary feet on the upland track. This is the 
upland track, isn’t it, Polly? Let’s hurry. 
Let’s gather up our remaining strength for a 
real home dash.” 

So the last half mile was a sprint through the 
woods that rimmed the border of the lake. It 
had been a splendid jaunt. Even Aunt Milli- 
cent had rosy cheeks as she put on an enveloping 
apron and helped Polly carve off generous slices 
of ham while Peggy made the biscuits. It had 
been discovered early in the week that the Mur- 
ray recipe for biscuits took the cake, as Pipes 
put it. If it were possible to twist anything 
around the double way, she usually could do it. 
Anyway, Peggie had been appointed official bis- 
cuit-maker for the camp. She stood in the cook 
tent now rolling out the dough, when suddenly 
Crullers let out a cry of alarm. 


214 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


Vera and Natalie were busy setting the long 
table out in the shade and Hallie had run down 
to the lake where they kept the butter crock in 
a cool place. 

“Why, they haven’t cooked one bit in your old 
tireless cooker!” Crullers exclaimed, lifting out 
the shiny aluminum kettles. “They look just 
the way they did when I put them in there.” 

Everyone trooped over to look at the tragedy. 
There were the Brown Betty pudding and the 
scalloped potatoes as she said, just as they had 
been when she had put them in. 

“Crullers!” Polly cried reproachfully, even ac- 
cusingly. “Crullers Adams, didn’t you start 
them cooking first?” 

“Didn’t I what?” asked Crullers aghast. 

“Start them cooking over the real fire first?” 

“Why, no. Doesn’t this cook them? I 
thought you didn’t need any fire if it’s a fireless 
cooker.” 

“Oh, I die, I die,” moaned Betty. “I mean I 
starve, I starve. Crullers, you ought to be 
rolled off the rocks at dawn.” 

But the rest laughed. It was the best thing 
to do, with the tears tumbling from Crullers’ wide 
blue eyes. 


THE CASTLE DOMAIN 


215 


“Never mind,” said Aunt Millicent hopefully. 
“We’ll open up some of the canned luxuries. 
Turn the potatoes into the large frying pan and 
brown them and the Betty will do for supper. 
But, Crullers, listen. Don’t you dare say you 
can cook any more. We forgive you, only you 
can’t cook.” 

“You can fish with Flickers,” Polly comforted 
her. “You do really fish beautifully, Crullers, 
and you have better luck than any of us, so you 
win out that way even if you can’t use a fireless 
cooker. And we forgive you, don’t we, girls?” 

Whereupon, led by Betty and Natalie, the 
girls formed a circle around the forlorn and hap- 
less figure and chanted right sweetly, 

“ ‘We forgive, we forgive, we do forgive our Crullers ! 

Our Crullers we do, we do for-give, ah, yes, 

We do for-give! 

But may she never, never, ah, never — do — it — more !* ” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


CRULLERS FINDS THE WANDER ROSE 

It was at breakfast the beginning of the sec- 
ond week. The sun had risen gloriously and 
wakened them all. By six the muffins, raspber- 
ries and 'cream, and bacon omelet were on the 
table. The latter was Aunt Millicent’s idea. 
She would toast tiny squares of bread the same 
as for soup croutons, cut the bacon in little 
squares too, and toss them in the pan before she 
turned over them the beaten eggs for the omelet, 
and the girls declared it the real success of the 
morning. 

“I know what we’ve all forgotten in this 
camp,” Polly said suddenly. “A name for it. 
We just call it ‘the camp.’ It should be blessed 
and dignified with a proper name.” 

“Camp Joyful,” suggested Betty, right off the 
reel. 

“Camp — camp — camp,” rambled Crullers 
meditatively, “camp Sufficiency? Camp Cal- 
vert? Camp Comfort?” 


THE WANDER ROSE 


217 


“Forest Glen Camp.” Isabel gave this after 
a few minutes’ thought. “We want to express 
the beauties of the place.” 

“Camp Pocahontas,” Peggie suggested. 

“Try to get something characteristic,” Aunt 
Millicent advised. “You’re here for a good time 
and to get back as close to the heart of Mother 
Nature as you can.” 

“I know,” Hallie exclaimed. “Pan! Some- 
thing about Pan. It really is suitable, Polly, be- 
cause I expect to see his funny head with the lit- 
tle horns bob up at me any time at all behind a 
rock or some bushes.” 

“I think,” said Polly, “we ought to name it for 
the lake. Agoonah Camp. It’s from the In- 
dian language, it’s soft and musical, and it means 
something. What did you tell us it meant, Aunt 
Millyf” 

“Lake of the Wild Loon. Another name we 
have up here for the small lake over near the Cas- 
tle is Wa-po Lake, Sunbeam Lake that is, or 
Sun-in-the-W ater.” 

“Oh, I like Lake of the Wild Loon,” laughed 
Polly. “This is really a camp of wild loons. 
Let’s take a vote on it, not a rising one, a tapping 
one. All in favor of Agoonah Camp tap on the 


218 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


table with their knives. Contrary minded, no. 
The taps have it.” 

Betty stood up on the wooden bench Flickers 
had constructed for them, and spread her arms 
wide. 

“Agoonah, we christen thee, camp of the 
loons !” 

“As I remember,” Isabel remarked, “the 
loon is a good nest builder anyway, and minds its 
own affairs.” 

“It does,” Polly agreed, “but it rambles all 
over creation first, and sees the world.” 

So Agoonah Camp it was named. Yera, who 
had taken Ted’s place as club photographer, said 
she was going to try to get a snap at a real live 
loon, and use him as a mascot. 

“Not alive?” Crullers questioned. “You 
mean to use it like a sort of crest, don’t you, 
Nipper, on our post cards and letters?” 

“Exactly,” Vera said. “Crullers precious, 
you always seem to make everything so simple. 
We’ll fix a loon somewhere around these here 
diggings and he’ll do for the camp crest. A loon 
rampant or couchant, girls? Also, we do need 
a few gules and bars argent?” 

“You’re always making fun of me,” Crullers 


THE WANDER ROSE 


219 


returned a bit huffed. “Betty and Hallie say 
just as foolish things as I do, only they are not 
noticed.” 

“Oh, caitiff heart, to tell on us,” Betty teased. 
“Wait till we get thee out in the canoe far from 
help and duck thee right lustily.” 

“No, you won’t. Not this week anyhow. 
Natalie and I are the next to teach Kate’s kid- 
dies,” Crullers replied proudly. “We start in 
this morning. So, Brown Betty.” 

“I wonder how she’ll ever get on,” Polly said 
later, as she watched Nat and Crullers go down 
the short cut towards Mapledene Farm. “It 
seems as if Crullers isn’t fitted for anything spe- 
cial, doesn’t it, Aunt Milly?” 

“Yes, she is. Every single one of us is fitted 
for something. It’s only a question of finding 
the right groove,” Mrs. Abbott answered hap- 
pily. “I shouldn’t wonder if Jane Daphne finds 
her element right down there among those kid- 
dies.” 

Aunt Millicent’s prediction was correct. By 
Thursday Crullers had proved herself a wonder 
at managing the children. She never tired of 
them, and she did not try to invent new methods 
of infantile education as Isabel had. All the old 


220 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


favorite games were used with really splendid 
results, Kate and the Doctor said. With Nat- 
alie’s help, she guided the feet of toddlers from 
Italy, Poland, Russia, and even two from Hun- 
gary, through the mazes of London Bridge, 
There Came Three Kings A-Roving, Duck on a 
Rock, Touch Tag, Blind Man’s Buff, F armer in 
the Dell, and even the old time Copenhagen. 

“Why, I didn’t know there were so many 
games until Crullers started them,” Natalie de- 
clared. “When they grow tired of one, she al- 
ways has a new one up her sleeve. And she can 
sing all the nursery rhymes and make up little 
plays for them. Our Crullers has been hiding 
her light under a bushel. She is a child of gen- 
ius.” 

“I’m glad I’m something at last,” Crullers said 
with relief. “I’ve played cupbearer to all the 
Seniors and Juniors at Calvert until I can hardly 
see straight. It’s fearful being mixed up with 
so many coming geniuses when you’re not sure 
what you are yourself. Here Peg’s going to be a 
sculptress, and Nipper’s going to take up the 
scientific raising of roses, and Pipes wants grand 
opera, and Isabel will probably marry a bishop 
or a senator — ” 


THE WANDER ROSE 


221 


“Go on, Crullers, do go on,” begged Hallie, 
as she paused. “You do grumble so interest- 
ingly. Give me a fortune, and what about Betty 
and Polly?” 

“Oh, that makes me think,” said Crullers ab- 
ruptly. “Yesterday we saw two gypsy wagons 
and four horses down in the Hollow. 

“And we went over and asked a girl who was 
picking daisies if any more gypsies were com- 
ing, and she said yes, later on. She didn’t look 
very barbaric, but still she jingled a little, ban- 
gles on her bracelet and around her neck, and her 
hair was down in two braids.” 

“It’s probably Judy,” Aunt Millicent inter- 
posed cheerfully. “She’s usually the first of the 
art students to show up around here. “I told 
you about her before when we were in Vir- 
ginia. Judith Terry her name is, a very clever 
girl.” 

“Why does she go around in gypsy wagons?” 
asked Isabel. 

“I suppose it appeals to her. You know what 
the Declaration of Independence says, Isabel, 
about the individual pursuit of happiness. One 
year she did Cornwall and Wales in a gypsy cart, 
I believe, with two girl student friends. They 


222 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


picked up the idea over there. We’ll have to go 
and call on them.” 

When Flickers came up with the mail that 
morning, there was a general acclamation, for he 
brought a letter announcing the arrival that day 
of Takeshi and Uncle Thurlow. 

“Ahead of time too,” sighed Polly. “I knew 
this would turn into a family gathering before 
the summer was half over. Pretty soon we’ll 
have a letter from Grandfather announcing his 
coming with Aunt Evelyn to be sure we are quite 
safe. Whatever could we do with them here in 
the camp? We’ll have to move over to the is- 
land to get out of reach, girls.” 

“I think we might have an auxiliary camp over 
there for emergencies,” Hallie agreed. “We 
could take over one tent, or build a sort of 
shack out of logs, hut we never could do it 
alone.” 

“We could if we had the logs.” Polly 
grasped at the new idea. It promised novelty 
and adventure, delightful adventure. “I don’t 
see why we couldn’t cut the logs too, and saw 
them up if we had to. Nobody knows what we 
could do if it were really a case of emergency. 
I feel just as if I wanted to build a log cabin even 


THE WANDER ROSE 223 

if it’s only to find out whether or not I could if 
I did have to.” 

“Easy as anything,” Betty responded happily. 
“Didn’t we girls wield the buck saw one day when 
Flickers left us in the lurch? I wanted to swing 
the axe too, but you were afraid I’d cut off a toe. 
Let’s build our own log cabin and not say a word 
about it to Flickers or anyone.” 

“Flickers and Jimmie especially,” assented 
Polly, “or we’ll see it as a local item in the Mont- 
alban Farm Journal.” 

The island was nearly half a mile long and 
well wooded. Tuesday morning after the camp 
work had been attended to, the girls took the 
canoe and paddled over to reconnoiter. Mrs. 
Abbott watched them from the bank. Polly sat 
in the prow as “stroke,” and behind her were the 
others, two by two. Every afternoon since their 
arrival they had been hard at work drilling, and 
now they kept good time with their paddles. 

Shading her eyes from the brilliant sunlight 
sheen on the water. Aunt Millicent waved to 
them and received a paddle salute in return. It 
was more than summer fun the girls were having, 
she thought; more than woodcraft and camp 
cookery they were learning. The little crew in 


224 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


the canoe with its even stroke seemed to symbol- 
ize the gradual working together in co-operative 
endeavor, the mutual reliance on each other, and 
the stronger better comradeship the life in the 
forest brought to the surface. 

Betty and Isabel had thrown little banderillos 
at each other all the long term at Calvert Hall; 
while Natalie and Hallie had always rasped a 
bit on each other’s sensibilities in little mat- 
ters, although taken in the long run they were 
good pals. But in some way up here in the 
mountains, they had all gained a wider out- 
look. 

The little every-day things that were ordinarily 
irritating, here were just laughed at and passed 
over. The esprit de corps , that binds a party of 
explorers together as securely as the rope guards 
Alpine climbers from peril, was being felt more 
and more among the girls. They were depend- 
ent on one another for happiness and fun and 
everything that made up the well-being of the 
camp. Each one was responsible, not alone for 
her own personal comfort and enjoyment, but 
also for that of the others. 

It was wonderfully stimulating, too, after they 
fell into the spirit of it and, best of all perhaps, 


THE WANDER ROSE 


225 


it had come unconsciously without any preaching 
or direction. 

“The highest beauty is always within,” Mrs. 
Abbott had said one night when they sat around 
the camp fire. “What we see is only the outward 
reflection. You are doing team-work here in 
the camp, learning to keep step with each other. 
As Takeshi would say in his poetic Japanese 
style, you are learning the dance of the stars, 
each dependent on the other for rhythm.’’ 

“Crullers, don’t you dare to trip on the Milky 
Way,” Betty had advised sagely, for it had fallen 
to Crullers and Natalie that week to carry the 
milk can back and forth to Mapledene Farm for 
replenishment. 

But Crullers had only smiled back. The quick 
retort did not rise to her lips as easily as it used 
to. She was too busy thinking up new games 
and occupations for teaching the children at the 
farm. And this was a revelation to Crullers as 
well as the rest. 

“I never knew what I wanted to do or be,” 
she told Polly after they had landed on the island 
and were strolling up the beach. “I didn’t like 
art specially, or music or anything really pro- 
fessional, don’t you know, like the rest of you 


226 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


girls. I only liked children and good things to 
eat. And now I’ve found out that they like 
me too, I mean the children, and I can manage 
them all right. Kate says if I want to when I 
finish school I can come to her and the Doctor 
and take up the work with them. And I pick up 
languages too. Listen, Polly, 'Mia bambino, 
mia carissima, buono niente.’ ” 

“It sounds kind of tangled, but maybe it’s all 
right,” Polly answered hopefully. “Anyway, 
you’re winning out. Crullers, bless your modest 
little heart. When I think how you’ve toted 
pickled limes and pralines for us for years, I’m 
awfully glad. Life looks different when you 
can see the road ahead. I came across the 
dearest bit of poetry that has such a big urge in 
it. Listen, now.” She said the verses under 
her breath, so the others could not hear, her hands 
clasped behind her head, her face uplifted to the 
mountains, as they halted a minute under some 
pines. 

“Since I found the wander rose. 

Smiling skies are o’er me; 

Dew-wet lane and hawthorne hedge 
Open green before me. 

Rain may fall, I heed it not. 


THE WANDER ROSE 


227 


For whate’er the weather 

Luck and I go hand in hand 
Down the world together. 

“Petals tinged with sunset light, 

Glowing fresh and golden; 

Stem hung green with fairy moss 
From a forest olden; 

Scent of fern-wet forest aisles. 

When the day is dying; 

Fares the Wander Rose I found 
On my heart close lying. 

“Since I found the Wander Rose 
Smiling skies are o’er me; 

With the long white road unrolled. 

Stretching free before me. 

Winter snows I heed them not 
For whate’er the weather 

Luck and I go hand in hand 
Down the world together.” 

“ Are you two ever coming ?” called back Vera. 

“Right away, right away,” Polly answered. 
“We’re flying up in the blue sky together on the 
wings of poesy.” 

After looking the island over thoroughly, a site 
was finally selected. It must face the south 
and therefore be on the farther shore from the 


228 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


camp, away from the gaze of the casual on- 
looker. 

“Who’s the casual onlooker here?” asked Betty. 
“Flickers or the chipmunks?” 

“Just you wait till the Judy girl from the 
gypsy wagon comes over to see us and Uncle 
Thurlow’s students drop casually in to see 
whether we’re picturesque or not. You don’t 
have to put any uprights in a log cabin, do you, 
girls? Just pile logs in a square and fill in the 
chinks, then roof it over flat.” 

“Sounds like the front sun parlor to a dug 
out,” Natalie remarked judicially, “but it may 
work out all right. Who’s going to cut the 
logs?” 

“We can hire Flickers to draw them up to the 
camp and then we’ll- ferry them over here se- 
cretly at midnight,” Hallie suggested blithely. 
“We can’t let any one come down here, Polly.” 

“But by rights, we should be absolutely inde- 
pendent and cut them ourselves,” Polly said 
firmly. “I’ll ask Aunt Millicent what she thinks. 
You know if we were what we pretend we are — 
girls alone in a forest primaeval — we’d have to 
do everything for ourselves.” 

“Hush, girls, do hush,” whispered Yera. “I’ll 


THE WANDER ROSE 229 

get him in just a minute if you’ll only keep 
quiet.” 

She had been lying on a little rise of ground 
below them watching through the bushes a patch 
of marshy land beyond where they had been 
walking. Camera leveled, she aimed at a bird 
down on the wet sand. It was like a miniature 
cassowary or even a very young turkey, Betty 
said in describing it later, and it stalked about 
daintily. Cautiously Vera snapped it, and sat 
back triumphantly. 

“Girls, I have an idea that is a loon, and he’s 
probably caretaker of the island and has had 
one eye on us all the time.” 

“Nipper, a loon that size!” Peggie laughed. 
“Loons are the great northern divers and come 
from the Arctic circle in cold weather, but not as 
far south as this; do they, Polly?” 

“Then what is it if it isn’t a loon?” asked Vera 
before Polly could get in a word. “And there 
must have been loons here sometime or the In- 
dians wouldn’t have named the lake Agoonah. 
Simple logic, Betty.” 

“That creature is a sand piper,” Isabel de- 
clared. “It’s a wonder Nipper didn’t call it a 
baby ostrich.” 


230 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“Listen,” Polly warned. Over the water from 
the camp came a long halloo. 

“That doesn’t sound like Aunt Milly,” she 
said. “And Flickers wouldn’t call us. Let’s 
hurry, girls. There’s something new happening 
at the Camp of the Wild Loon.” 


CHAPTER XIX 


THE HIKE TO BALDY KNOB 

When they reached the camp, the first person 
they beheld was Takeshi. Standing like a senti- 
nel on guard before Aunt Millicent’s tent, he 
gravely saluted them. 

“Most beautiful day. I think not maybe it 
will rain,” he remarked quite in the tone as if he 
had graciously arranged the weather to suit their 
happiness and convenience. “Mr. Abbott pre- 
sent himself in one second.” 

“Here we are,” Aunt Millicent said, emerging 
from the tent. “I’m only exhibiting all our won- 
derful folding contrivances and conveniences, so 
he will be jealous over in his old bachelor quar- 
ters. Wasn’t it nice of him, though, girls, to 
ride up that old timber road hunting us to be sure 
we were all right?” 

“Splendid,” the girls exclaimed, as Uncle 
Thurlow came forward, asking how the camp 
witches were getting along. 


232 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“You may call him Uncle Thurlow if you 
like,” Polly said generously, hugging one coat 
sleeve. “I don’t blame you a bit if you want 
to.” 

He did seem specially good to look at today, 
somehow, they all thought. It was all very well 
to talk about lonely log cabins, and islands where 
no man might land, not even Flickers; but this 
big, strenuous, merry-eyed uncle was imme- 
diately adopted by every girl in camp. His 
help might be a very desirable thing before the 
summer was over, they thought. 

It had been a long dusty trip up from New 
York in the machine, he told them. Even Take- 
shi had said several times he wished the honorable 
gods would let fall a little rain. 

“And we do need it badly,” Mr. Abbott said, 
leaning back from the long plank dinner table 
under the trees after he had finished dinner with 
them. “Be careful in every way over here about 
fire, and if you see a pillar of smoke hanging over 
the forest anywhere, give the alarm. We are all 
volunteer firemen up here, those who love the 
woods. Bank your fires with ashes at night if 
you need to keep them over, and don’t drop any 
matches around. Know what I do up here? 


THE HIKE TO BALDY KNOB 233 


Takeshi taught me how. I’m rather fond of my 
pipe when I’m out painting or sketching, so when 
I light a match, I stick it down in the ground to 
extinguish it. Tiy it. Now, children, I’m go- 
ing to run away with your guardian for the after- 
noon. She has to be my guardian and see that 
the Castle is settled properly. Remember, you 
are all invited over there any time you feel like 
coming.” 

Polly managed to get in a word just as he 
was getting into the machine. 

“Is Mr. Phelps coming up, do you think, Un- 
cle Thurlow?” 

“Not that I know of, Pollykins. Not unless 
your Aunt Faith persuades him to come. I be- 
lieve she and Evelyn are rather petting him up, 
and trying to get him away from New York. 
Every man needs some wise and sweet woman 
like your Aunt Millicent to boss him delightfully 
and make him do what he should do in order to 
lead a calm, happy existence in this topsy-turvy 
world.” 

“Be still, you great boy,” Aunt Milly ex- 
claimed, as he tucked her in beside him. “First 
you compliment me and pet me and then you and 
Takeshi are quite liable to turn around and de- 


234 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


nounce me because I like the Adirondacks bet- 
ter than Fujiyama.” 

The girls stood and waved good-bye as the big 
touring car went rather gingerly down the tim- 
ber road, bumping over the high ridges of turf 
between the ruts. 

“They’ll have an awful time until they hit the 
State road,” Polly said. “It’s all bumps and 
thank-you-ma’ams between.” 

Betty and Isabel were on duty in the cook tent, 
washing the dishes. In some way, the camp 
seemed actually lonesome after the last purr of 
the motor died away. Peggie thought they had 
better write home letters. They could get out 
the paper pads and all line up at the table under 
the trees. Marjorie wanted to wash. 

“I don’t approve at all,” said Betty from the 
tent. “Pipes, how can you suggest washing on 
a glorious afternoon like this? If that especial 
act appeals to you as the poetry of motion, go 
ahead, but I shall hike forth as a light-footed ad- 
venturer just as soon as I’ve finished these seven- 
teen hundred pots and pans that Polly has left.” 

“I’ll do them the end of the week, Betty,” Isa- 
bel promised; “just as soon as my rubber gloves 
come up.” 


THE HIKE TO BALDY KNOB 235 


“Picture the rubber gloves of Lady Vanitas 
doing a graceful and decorous Marathon over 
the hilltops from New York to this rock ledge,” 
Polly teased. “I don’t want to write any letters. 
Peg. Let’s all go scouting as Betty says. Let’s 
go to the caves.” 

“Polly, you angel, you deliverer from letter 
writing,” Hallie exclaimed thankfully. “Peg- 
gie’s always suggesting something highly virtu- 
ous just like Miss Calvert, and you feel like a 
villain if you don’t buckle down and do it prop- 
erly. Where are these deep, dark holes in the 
ground that we are to explore secretly? My 
finger-nails are cracking, my finger-nails are 
cracking.” 

“What for, goosie?” 

“The thrill of expectancy.” 

“It isn’t far, girls,” Betty called. “Flickers 
said you couldn’t miss them because they’re under 
that big overhanging rock ledge you can see from 
Eagle Rock.” 

“Yes, but you can’t see it from any other point 
along the way, can you?” asked Isabel doubt- 
fully. “Of course, we’ve got compasses, but we 
don’t know the exact point we’re aiming at.” 

“Remember what Aunty Welcome used to tell 


236 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


us, it’s better to aim at a star and hit the bar 
post than to aim at the bar post and hit the 
ground,” Polly replied cheerfully. ‘‘If we make 
a start for the caves, we may land something else 
half-way there even if we don’t reach them.” 

“You know, Polly,” Betty came out of the 
cook tent, a dish towel dangling from one hand 
and a plate elevated in the other, “you’re a dandy 
old philosopher and encourager.” 

“I think a philosopher should always encourage 
people,” Polly declared laughingly. “We want 
no tubs or lanterns in our club, and anyone who 
wants to share our sunshine is entirely welcome.” 

“Oh, gay hearted Miss Diogenes, I follow thee 
gladly.” 

“If you don’t stop dancing around, we’ll never 
get a start. Hallie, you get out the drinking 
cups and pilgrim staffs.” 

“And a lunch, please let’s take a lunch,” Mar- 
jorie pleaded. “Pimento cheese and crackers, 
and bacon. We could have a bacon bat over on 
the rocks. If we should get lost we shouldn’t 
starve. We’d have to go on short rations. Once 
there was a little girl — ” 

Polly slipped both hands over her eyes sud- 
denly and finished up, 


THE HIKE TO BALDY KNOB 237 


“ ‘Who wouldn’t say her prayers, 

And she had to go to sleep ’way upstairs.’ 

Mountain gobble’uns will get you. Pipes, if you 
don’t watch out.” 

“I think we’re perfectly safe,” said Isabel 
placidly. “We have the direction firmly fixed in 
our minds.” 

“Quite so,” Betty agreed, “and if we lose our 
bearings. Commander Polly will have to climb a 
tree with our valued assistance and locate our 
destination.” 

Laughing and teasing one another, they took 
the trail, after getting into bloomers, tramping 
boots, and middies. A note was written and 
tacked to the tent pole in the cooking domain for 
Aunt Millicent to find should she return first, 
and they started up the mountain path leading 
from the wood-road to above timber line. 

It was a beautiful day, warm but with a light 
breeze blowing off the lake. As they went 
higher into the green depths of the forest, their 
gay chatter ceased. Something of the forest si- 
lence fell on them. It was so wonderful, the 
great sweeping expanses that opened up before 
them at each clearing. Once they came to the 
edge of a great natural gash in the side of the 


238 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


mountain, a sheer drop of hundreds of feet, al- 
though looking down, one saw only the tops of 
trees, their branches stirring like the ruffled wave- 
lets of a green sea. 

Polly parted the thick bushes, holding them 
back with Isabel’s help, and the others crawled 
to the edge and peered down. 

“It’s like looking out of a tower window, the 
highest tower in the world,” Marjorie said softly. 
“See how the mountains deepen to purple away 
off over there. You can hardly tell whether they 
are mountains or clouds.” 

“Do you girls remember this in Tennyson s 
‘Day Dream’?” Betty’s usually merry tone was 
a bit subdued as she stood with lifted chin look- 
ing off at the mountains. 

“ ‘Across the hills and far away 

Beyond their utmost purple rim. 

And deep into the dying day. 

The happy princess followed him.' ” 

“There you have it again,” Peggie spoke up 
suddenly. “ ‘Followed him.’ Just like a squaw. 
Why didn’t he put his arm around her, and the 
two of them walk side by side together?” 

“Peg, you haven’t any soul for poetry,” Betty 


THE HIKE TO BALDY KNOB 239 


declared sadly. “He probably didn’t give a rap 
how she chose to walk so long as she accompanied 
him.” 

Higher up they came out on a wide clearing 
where there had been a saw mill in the winter 
time. The lumbermen’s shack was still there, 
with a crooked stove pipe sticking out rakishly 
at one end, and in a circular space was a heap of 
sawdust and chips. 

“Now, wouldn’t those be handy for our kin- 
dling!” Hallie exclaimed. “If we only had some 
way of carrying them. Peg, you and I could 
come up with potato sacks and get some on 
our backs tomorrow, the way we did the pine 
cones.” 

“I should think it would be awfully cold up 
here in the winter, chopping wood.” 

“You never get cold when you’re out working 
in the open, Isabel. If you were here chopping 
wood — ” 

“Think of our precious old Lady Vanitas out 
chopping wood with her dainty white hands all 
chapped and cold,” Polly said, sympathetically. 
“She’d have to wear lambskin gloves, and carry 
around a little gold topped bottle of rosewater 
and glycerine all the time; wouldn’t you, Blanch- 


240 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


mains? Oh, girls,” she stopped suddenly. 
“That makes me think of something — ” 

“What does? The bottle of rosewater?” asked 
Betty, interestedly. 

“No. The name, Blanchmains. It means 
white hands, and it was the name of the pretty 
marionette at the Parisis.” 

“Plural, Parisi, Polly,” Isabel suggested. 
“You must speak correctly.” 

“All right,” Polly retorted a bit recklessly. 
“I wonder what’s happening at the Casa Neri, 
that’s all.” 

“Did you ever hear anything else from Ra- 
venna?” 

“Never mind asking questions, Hallie. It’s 
a secret.” 

And not another word could they coax from 
her about Ravenna or the Casa Neri, or Donna 
Costanza. But as she tramped with the rest 
through the green gold gloom of those pine aisles, 
Polly wondered if Lindsay had ever been up 
there, and loved it too. Perhaps way off on the 
olive crowned heights where Dante had dreamed 
years before, he longed for the good old moun- 
tains of the home state. A line drifted into her 
mind from one of her favorite poems, “Pippa 


THE HIKE TO BALDY KNOB 241 


Passes,” something about an unsuspected isle in 
the far sea, and a mountain there, 

“Whole brotherhoods of cedars on its brow.” 

Here were whole brotherhoods of hemlocks and 
tall pines. All about them they, rose, straight 
and beautiful against the rich deep blue of the 
summer sky. Sometimes they saw a mass of 
rough sticks high in the top boughs of one, and 
wondered whether it was an eagle’s nest, or at 
least a hawk’s, or maybe a crow’s. As Betty 
said, surely it was one of them. 

Under foot lay layers and layers of pine nee- 
dles, no one knew how many years they repre- 
sented, that thick soft fragrant russet carpet of 
needles that made a bed for ferns to grow in. 
It seemed as if they found all kinds, the tall 
palm-like fronds of the large mountain fern, 
the maidenhair always in clumps by itself, the 
sturdy Boston, green all winter long, and tiny 
lacy ones that clung around the rock edges deli- 
cately. 

“Time for first rations,” Polly said as they 
came to a rambling brook tumbling over itself as 
it raced over a rocky bed under the pines. They 
sat down and munched crackers and pimento 


242 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


cheese contentedly; then a pool deep between 
rocks teased them to inspect it more closely, and 
they all went in wading. It was cold, but after 
a minute of heroism they became used to it, and 
Peggie led them along the glen bottom, following 
the brook’s running waves. Suddenly Polly 
stopped and pointed up among the trees. There, 
under a mass of overhanging hemlocks, was a 
rustic seat built just where it commanded a full 
view of the beautiful ravine and brook. 

“Now, whoever did that?” she asked delight- 
edly. “Somebody who loved it all. My run- 
away, I think, girls. Isn’t it dear?” 

Up they clambered, over rocks and ferns and 
dead underbrush and fallen limbs, until they 
reached it. It was made of white birch, and held 
four of them. There was a supporting platform 
under it, about six feet long, and the others sat 
on this. Betty and Polly had brought their ko- 
daks, and took snapshots of the group. After- 
wards Isabel snapped them too. Finally Peg- 
gie proposed that they all carve their initials on 
the back of the seat. 

“Do you suppose he’d mind?” asked Polly. 

“I think he’d love it if he ever comes back to 
see them,” Betty returned. “It shows that a 


THE HIKE TO BALDY KNOB 243 


lot of others found his rest place and loved it 
too.” 

M I would call it the ‘Peace Spot, 5 55 Polly said. 
“Think what it must be here at sundown! 55 

It was hard to tear themselves away from the 
beauty of the glen, but, as Betty said, if one’s 
motto happened to be “Excelsior, 55 one had to 
keep going. 

It was nearly four by Isabel’s wrist watch 
when they finally saw the great rocky ledge over- 
hanging a deep ravine. Under the ledge were 
the caves, and even at a distance the girls saw 
them. They looked like great dark eyes peering 
from beneath heavy brows, forever brooding and 
dreaming in the great silences of the mountain. 

“But how on earth do you get to them? 55 Polly 
said, as they stood looking up. “A goat could 
hardly climb that rock face. 55 

“There’s a secret way, Flickers said, they call 
it the Indian ladder, 55 Peggie answered. “I 
think there used to be a real ladder that hung 
down that you had to climb. 55 

“I don’t see any. 55 Polly and the others stared 
up at the long expanse. “I suppose this is De- 
vonian drift, as Miss Calvert would remark; isn’t 
it, girls? 55 


244 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“Somebody’s looking down at us,” Peggie said 
softly. “There’s a head in that third one; see it, 
girls?” 

Nobody spoke a word. Looking up the face 
of the rocks, they could see leaning out of one 
of the caves under the huge ledge, a head, and 
then an arm waving to them. 

“It’s Sarepta Jones,” exclaimed Polly with a 
sigh of quick relief. “Whatever is she doing 
away up there? Come along, girls, if she can 
get there, we can.” 


CHAPTER XX 


SAREPTA ENTERTAINS 

Through the underbrush that grew thickly 
along the base of the cliff, they made their way 
until they came within calling distance of Sa- 
repta. She was making signs to them, and 
pointing. 

“Come through the cave,” she shouted to them. 

“Through the cave,” repeated Polly. “How 
can we do that?” 

“She’s pointing down this way,” Peggie called, 
pushing ahead of the rest along a narrow path 
that one had to part the bushes to find. 

“But it only comes bang up against the sheer 
rock wall.” 

“No, it doesn’t, it doesn’t, girls,” Peggie ex- 
claimed. “There’s a cave here. I’m going in.” 

Under the great ragged ledge of rock they all 
went, following the little winding trail cautiously. 
It went in about twenty-five feet before it turned, 
and went around like a circular staircase. Isabel 


246 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


said it was like the salt mines, and Marjorie said 
no, it was like the caves of the Dolomites where 
the cave bear skeletons have been found. As it 
grew darker, the girls hesitated, but presently 
Sarepta’s voice sounded beyond urging them for- 
ward. 

“Ain’t a thing to harm ye,” she called. “Just 
step right along the path. It comes out again 
up here.” 

Sure enough, it did. After a long climb, feel- 
ing their way along the rock walls, they finally 
emerged into a large cave, one side of which was 
open and looked out from beneath the great rock 
ledge. 

“That’s where I watched ye from,” Sarepta 
said, eyeing them happily. “Seems pretty good 
to have callers, even if you did sort of walk in 
on me. I can’t say take a chair, but there’s some 
old potato sacks yonder that I sleep on. Makes 
a good bed too, with plenty of leaves and ferns 
underneath. Know the kind of ferns to get for 
your bed, don’t ye? Pollypods, that’s the sort. 
Them big tall ones like pa’ms. Pollypods, we 
call them.” 

“Do you really live up here, Sarepta?” asked 
Polly. 


SAREPTA ENTERTAINS 247 


“Don’t you like it?” Sarepta asked calmly and 
mildly. “It’s the coolest place on a hot night, 
and the warmest one on a cold night that you ever 
saw. I’m a sight more comfortable up here than 
you folks be down in that camp. I wouldn’t 
feel safe a minute there, it’s so public. How’s 
the Missus?” 

Polly told about the arrival of Mr. Abbott, 
and how he had whisked away the camp chap- 
eron. 

“And you got into mischief the minute her 
hack was turned, didn’t you?” asked Sarepta, 
her dark eyes twinkling a bit. “Did you bring 
a lantern along? No. I thought as much. 
How in tunket did you expect to see the caves 
without any lanterns or candles? Never mind. 
If I haven’t got one around somewhere, we’ll 
send Nicodemus up to Gabriel for one. Any- 
thing I don’t have around handy, I just send up 
to him for, and he sends it right down.” 

The girls tried not to notice what she said, but 
every one of them was certain she meant the an- 
gel Gabriel, and as Polly said later, it was fear- 
fully embarrassing to have her speak of him in 
such a friendly way. But in a few minutes Sa- 
repta had taken an old piece of paper and a stub 


248 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


of a pencil and had laboriously written a message 
on it. Then she called the dog and attached it 
to his collar, and told him to go along and trot 
up to Gabe’s with it. 

“He’ll bring one back all right,” she said. 
“Like enough Gabe will come down with him to 
take you all through. It’d be just like him.” 

Polly thought it was a good thing Crullers was 
not there. Nothing could have repressed her, 
no lecture on consideration for another’s infirm- 
ities, or courtesy to one’s hostess, nothing at all. 
Crullers would have laughed, but the rest sat and 
listened with wide eyes. As Isabel said after- 
wards, the point was that she really believed he 
would come down. 

“We ought to divert her mind now,” she whis- 
pered to Polly, so they began asking her what 
flowers grew on her side of Baldy Knob, and 
whether she was ever lonesome. 

“Yes, I was once,” Sarepta answered thought- 
fully. “I went down to Albany to visit a niece 
of mine who thought I was crazy because I chose 
to worship God in the forests and on His moun- 
tains, and I was so lonesome I didn’t know what 
to do with myself. But we ain’t never lonesome 
up here where we know all about everything, 


SAREPTA ENTERTAINS 249 


Nick and me. When I get tired of one cave I 
move into another, but this one’s my favorite. I 
call it my sky parlor. There ain’t such another 
view as this in all New York State.” 

“Let’s have our lunch here,” proposed Betty 
suddenly. “You wouldn’t mind, would you, 
Sarepta, if we had a nice little bacon bat out on 
your stone parapet?” 

“Don’t mind a bit. Got any matches this 
time?” Sarepta laughed with them and helped 
get things ready for the bacon bat. She even 
permitted them to use her fireplace, one she had 
rigged up herself between two rocks. Across 
them she had laid an old iron rod for a crane, 
and underneath it the rock was somewhat hol- 
lowed out, so that it held a fire well. 

The girls never forgot that afternoon. It was 
so romantic, sitting around the fire toasting slices 
of bacon on long sharpened sticks, and eating 
some of Sarepta’s store of fruit. 

“Almost live on fruit,” she told them. “Fruit 
and hulled corn and corn meal mush, and a few 
vegetables. Never eat a mite of meat though. 
Can’t bear to see anything killed and can’t bear 
to eat anything that’s been killed, neither. Gives 
me the shudders.” 


250 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


The sun had started downward towards the 
purple rim of the distant mountains when Nico- 
demus came back. The girls heard his bark be- 
fore he came in sight, and then they saw some- 
body behind him, stalking up the secret entrance 
to the caves. He was so tall that he had to stoop 
to walk along the passageway, a big, loosely-built 
man w ith a thin white beard and moustache. He 
was talking to the dog and smiling. 

“That’s Gabriel,” Sarepta said pleasantly. 
“He lives on top of the mountain same as I do 
down here. Pie’s crazy too, folks say, but it 
ain’t so. He studies the stars and he has to live 
away up on top of the mountain so he can see 
them all. If you follow the old Indian trail it 
will lead you up to his place. Howdy, Gabe.” 

Old Gabriel nodded his head rather shyly at 
sight of Sarepta’s afternoon reception, but when 
they explained to him what they wanted, he 
agreed to take the girls through the caves. 
These were not like the Virginia ones they had 
seen the year before. There everything had 
been done by man to make the way through easy 
and attractive. Here there were no electric 
lights or hand rails. They just followed old Ga- 
briel’s lead, and the flickering light of his lantern 


SAREPTA ENTERTAINS 251 


through vaulted chamber after vaulted chamber, 
and along low passages. To the girls, it was far 
more awe-inspiring and adventurous than the 
other trip had been, and they breathed a sigh of 
relief when he brought them out into the fresh 
air. 

“But this isn’t where we went in,” exclaimed 
Hallie. 

“ ’Bout half a mile below,” Gabriel explained. 
“This way’s quicker over to the lake. Want I 
should go along and show you the way?” 

“You know all the different trails and roads 
through these mountains, don’t you, Mr. Ga- 
briel?” asked Betty. 

“Last name’s Chevril,” answered Gabriel. 
“Folks ’round here can’t get it right, so they call 
me Old Cheerful, and I’d just as soon they did. 
My folks are all from farther north near the 
Canadian border. Got French blood in them. 
Good-bye and good luck to you.” He stood at 
the turn of the trail smiling. “I guess you can 
find your way now. When you come up again, 
come to my place. It’s as high as you can go. 
The stars walk tiptoe there at night and at dawn 
you can hear the sons of the morning sing like 
Job did.” 


252 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“Oh, goodness,” Betty exclaimed when they 
had left him. “I think if I stayed up here with 
Gabriel and Sarepta I’d get crazy too. You 
listen to them until you feel the same way, just 
as if everything that really is, wasn’t, and every- 
thing that isn’t, was.” 

“Betty’s got it twisted a little, girls,” laughed 
Polly. “She’s really quoting Scripture. ‘For 
the things that are seen are temporal, but the 
things that are unseen are eternal.’ ” 

“Well, anyway, I’ll never forget going through 
those caves with him leading us and Sarepta and 
Nicodemus bringing up the rear,” Betty insisted. 
“It was the strangest experience. What would 
Miss Calvert have said?” 

“I know,” Marjorie exclaimed, and she imi- 
tated the Lady Honoria’s tone perfectly as she 
said: “ ‘Most extraordinary!’ ” 

“Don’t,” Polly said with a sigh. “You make 
me homesick. I won’t hear it after this year any 
more.” 

“Poor old retiring commander,” Betty tried to 
soothe her. “What do you think you’ll do with 
yourself, now that you’re reaching the sere and 
yellow leaf, or is it sere and faded?” 

“Let’s talk about something good to eat,” Hal- 


SAREPTA ENTERTAINS 258 


lie begged impetuously. “I can’t bear to think 
of Calvert without Polly. Where’s that saw mill 
we passed on this road before?” 

“It wasn’t this road. Gabriel led us to an- 
other.” Polly paused to consult her compass. 
Betty, with Marjorie’s help, was singing at the 
top of her lungs : 

“ ‘I’m a-going away by the light of the moon. 

And I want all de children for to follow me, 

I hope I’ll meet you darkies soon, 

Halla — halla — halla — halleluj ah ! 

“ ‘In de morning, in de morning by de bright light. 

When Gabriel blows his trumpet in de morning.’ ” 

“We’ll be wishing for Gabriel to blow his 
trumpet long before morning if we don’t get the 
right path out of this wood,” Polly said grimly. 
“We’ve missed the timber trail and are going 
southeast instead of south the way he told us 
to.” 

“But we’re going down the mountain,” Vera 
declared. “We’re sure of getting to the bottom, 
aren’t we? We couldn’t get lost.” 

“It’s a quarter of six,” Isabel remarked with a 
shiver. “Why on earth didn’t we bring our 
sleeping bags. Think if we should have to stay 
out all night!” 


254 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“We’d go right back to Sarepta and her caves,” 
Polly said lightly although she was wondering 
just where they were. “Will you have an out- 
side cabin or an inside, Lady Yanitas? I think 
I’ll choose to sleep on the parapet. Didn’t the 
little bed of leaves look inviting?” 

“Oh, Polly, hush, please,” begged Pipes 
mournfully. “I wonder if we are really lost, 
girls. I don’t see a single familiar object.” 

“Keep a-going, Sarepta said, if we should miss 
the path,” Polly replied. “Let’s not get rattled, 
girls. You know the wilderness terror is a fig- 
ment of the brain, so Miss Calvert told us.” 

Hallie and Betty giggled outright. It re- 
lieved the nervous tension and they all started 
again although there was no sign of a beaten 
path. Polly and Yera took the lead, bending 
down sometimes to push forward through the 
tangled vines and thick underbrush. The rest 
followed Indian file, each holding back the 
branches to keep them from snapping in the next 
one’s face. It was hard, slow work, and the min- 
utes were precious. Once when they came to a 
little natural clearing, they stopped to catch their 
breath and rest a minute, and Betty reminded 
Polly of her suggestion. 


SAREPTA ENTERTAINS 


255 


“I said you’d have to climb a tree to see where 
we had landed. Try a pine, Polly. They’re 
easy.” 

Polly’s face brightened. “I will. There’s a 
lovely big one over yonder, and I know I can get 
up into it. Come along, fellow pilgrims.” 

At the base of the big pine they played they 
were Zouaves. Hands on their knees, they made 
a stepladder for Polly to mount, and laughing, 
half falling, she made her way up over their backs 
until she could catch the lowest boughs and swing 
herself up. From there it was easy. She 
climbed up, higher and higher into the thick 
branches, until she could part them and see out 
over the smaller trees. Down below the girls 
heard a shout of joy. 

“Are we near the camp?” she called. 

“No, children, we’re not,” Polly answered, 
“but we’re only about a quarter of a mile from 
the Castle. I think I’m a wonderful path- 
finder.” 

Betty sank down on a mossy bed. 

“Leave me here among the woodland violets. 
I’m going to be Titania and go beautifully mad 
like Sarepta.” 

“Violet time’s gone by. Come along now. 


256 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


It’s only a little way farther on,” Peggie said sen- 
sibly. 


“ ‘Farther on, farther on, 

I’ll be happy farther on,’ ” 

sang Betty feebly. “I feel as if I couldn’t take 
another step.” 

“Poor weak lamb,” Hallie sympathized. 
“Polly, didn’t Mr. Abbott say that Takeshi had 
bought chickens for their dinner tonight? Shall 
we be in time for chicken a la Nipponese?” 

Betty sat up at once and declared she felt in- 
stantly revived, so again they started off, Polly 
leading as scout, and came out on the State high- 
way just above the Castle grounds. 

Aunt Millicent was out on the side stone porch, 
fixing the rambler vine that had fallen down. 
When she saw them, her brown eyes opened wide 
with amazement. Tired they were and dusty 
from their long tramp, but rosy and radiantly 
happy. Leaning on their tall staffs, they smiled 
up at her, and begged an invitation to dinner. 

“For pity’s sake, where did you all drop 
from?” she exclaimed helplessly. “Of course 
you may have dinner. I think Takeshi is having 
roast chicken for us. Where have you been?” 


SAREPTA ENTERTAINS 257 


“Following Gabriel’s trumpet through Sa- 
repta’s caves,” Polly told her merrily. “And we 
didn’t lose our way either.” 

“Thanks to great presence of mind, one pine 
tree, one compass, and Polly’s good luck,” Vera 
put in. “Good old scout, isn’t she, girls?” 

But this time they were too weary even to 
raise a cheer, and Mrs. Abbott hustled the whole 
lot up to the big cool rooms to rest and bathe be- 
fore dinner. 


CHAPTER XXI 


JUDY, GYPSY PRINCESS 

The next week it was Peggie’s and Vera’s 
turns down at Mapledene, and the second day 
Flickers came up to the camp bearing a note for 
Polly and one for Mrs. Abbott likewise. 

They were busy working on the island log 
cabin, but it was the noon hour, and Flickers 
stood watching them as Polly opened her letter. 

“There isn’t anything you can do for us today, 
thanks, Flickers,” she said. 

“Yes, I know, but Pa’ll want to know what 
was in the letters,” answered Flickers inno- 
cently and serenely. 

“Well, I never,” exclaimed Polly, but Aunt 
Millicent laughed heartily, and told Mr. Jones’s 
eldest hope to bear the glad tidings back to his 
father that the entire camp had an invitation to 
spend the day at the farm on Thursday. 
Flickers drove away, completely satisfied, and 
Polly said the notice would appear in due time 
now, in Mr. Jones’s Farm Journal. 


JUDY, GYPSY PRINCESS 259 


The cabin was progressing spasmodically. 
One particular joy of Agoonali Camp, the girls 
said, was its absence of system. System in a 
camp, after one had run to the primaeval forests 
to be free, simply didn’t go at all, and was not to 
be tolerated. So far as the camp work was con- 
cerned they were all glad to do team work faith- 
fully, but when it came to recreation, there must 
be a free rein. 

“You see, we’re every one of us different and 
fearfully individualistic,” Betty remarked, as she 
brought out a lot of birch bark she had tucked 
away underneath her cot, and prepared to make 
little picture frames of it, bound with sweet grass 
strips. “Nipper isn’t satisfied unless she’s out 
with that camera aiming at birds, bees and but- 
terflies, whereas I have a love for the fireside.” 

“Yes, you have,” Polly broke in teasingly. 
“You’re the worst tramper in the camp.” 

“Tramp in the camp would have sounded bet- 
ter,” Betty returned truthfully. “I’m the tramp 
of the camp, the tramp of the camp, of the camp, 
camp, camp. Makes a dandy refrain, girls. 
I’m going to try it on a tin pan as soon as the 
sun goes down.” 

“Like your merry roundelay?” Pipes rose 


260 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


and lifted up her voice in song, and the rest 
joined in, Natalie from her tent, and even Aunt 
Millicent from the hammock where she was tak- 
ing a siesta. 

“Come to dinner, come to dinner. 

Hear those bells, hear those bells. 

Bacon and potatoes, bacon and potatoes, 

Pork and beans, pork and beans.” 

This was Betty’s adaptation of an old school 
round, that the girls had often used at Calvert 
Hall. 


“Freres Jacques, freres Jacques, 

Dormez vous, dormez vous, 

Sonnez le matin, sonnez le matin. 

Ding dong bell, ding dong bell.” 

“Hush, hush,” cried Isabel pleadingly. “I’m 
writing a home letter and I can’t hear myself 
think.” 

“Peace, peace, perturbed spirit,” soothed 
Betty. “Lo, at thy plaintive wail, we cease. 
Polly, let’s think up something new, something — 
what was it Isabel was chanting at us girls last 
night from her tent? Oh, I know. Let us re- 
store the spirit of adventure in the real things of 
life.” 


JUDY, GYPSY PRINCESS 261 


“That’s enough, Betty Morris,” Crullers said 
darkly. “The last time you did I found grass- 
hoppers in my bed.” 

The girls all laughed. It was impossible not 
to enjoy thoroughly any mishap that befell Crul- 
lers. She was so trustful, so credulous, that it 
was a constant temptation to try something new 
on her. Polly was the only one to whom Crul- 
lers confided any of her ambitions now, and they 
were high ones. 

Thursday came and they all went down to re- 
view Kate’s kiddies, or kindergarten, for Aunt 
Millicent said it was a real garden of children. 
Every week fresh batches came up from New 
York, and some were shipped back. They came 
pale and listless and went back “whooping,” so 
the Doctor said. Nedda was plump and rosy 
now, and her big boy tried to stand on his feet, 
strong and happy. 

“Never can I say t’ank you to the Signor and 
Signora,” Nedda said sadly. “They are an- 
gels.” 

“Kate, you’re an angel in a gingham apron,” 
Polly told her. 

“You have to be one,” Kate answered placidly. 
“It takes the patience of Job, and the sweet tern- 


262 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


per of your Aunt Evelyn to run this place. Doc- 
tor’s getting wrinkles, but I only get new 
freckles. Still we’ve won out,” she laughed 
happily; “and every one told us we were taking 
hold of too big a proposition to run successfully. 
We’ve managed to take from twenty to thirty 
youngsters a week and give them a taste of the 
country, and tuck away in their little minds the 
picture of all this. Maybe some day it will bear 
fruit. Perhaps some of them will want to come 
back where there aren’t any ‘keep off the grass’ 
signs.” 

It seemed as if each new day brought with it 
a new adventure. Friday they went for a long 
walk over the mountain-side to Blow-Me-Down 
Mill and talked to its owner, picked some of his 
water lilies and cat-tails, and stopped at the 
gypsy camp to meet Judy, the artist girl who 
was taking lessons from Mr. Abbott. She was 
making a brigand stew, she told them, as they 
came up. It cooked over a rousing fire, the big 
gypsy kettle swinging from three sticks. 

Judy knelt beside it, poking the stew vigor- 
ously. 

“The brigands have a wonderful way of mak- 
ing stews,” she told them, shaking back her curly 


JUDY, GYPSY PRINCESS 263 

red hair out of her eyes. “Did you ever meet 
a brigand, girls? I have, Capitano Alfredo di 
Mont’ Alarno. In Italy near Pisa. He had 
come to visit his old mother there, down from the 
northern mountains. And he showed me how 
to cook this mess. Red and green peppers, to- 
matoes, potatoes, the finest of beef cut into 
squares, onions, savory herbs, all sorts of things. 
I like to see just how many different things I 
can put in, and still make it come out a suc- 
cess.” 

It was a success, they assured her later when 
they had all sampled it. Sitting around in a 
circle with the pendant pot in the center, they 
solemnly helped themselves, while Judy chatted 
with Aunt Millicent of art in general and Uncle 
Thurlow’s new angle in it in particular. 

“And I think it’s perfectly dandy the way you 
girls are camping over yonder,” she said at last. 
“I came up here a few years ago, all run down 
and with no heart for anything, and look at me 
now. Why, I even chop what wood I need my- 
self. I think girls must be different from what 
they used to be.” 

“We’re wonderful people, Judy,” Polly an- 
swered. “Just ask Takeshi. He told me the 


264 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


other day that women were made from the moon’s 
tears and the sun’s smiles.” 

“That sounds like Lindsay, doesn’t it, Mrs. 
Abbott,” Judy smiled suddenly. 

“Does she know Lindsay Phelps?” Polly 
asked on the way back to the camp, as she walked 
beside Aunt Millicent. 

“Who, Judy? Why, yes, I believe so. 
Nearly all of your uncle’s pupils know him. 
Isn’t it a shame he isn’t here this summer? I 
can’t bear to think of him away off there among 
strangers. You haven’t heard from his father, 
have you, Polly?” 

“Not since we came here,” Polly said. “But 
I know he’ll surely be up, Aunt Milly, I feel it 
in my bones. How your Judy girl blushed when 
she spoke of Lindsay.” 

“They were good friends,” Aunt Millicent 
said, and Polly noticed she did not smile as she 
spoke. Whereupon she plunged ahead for infor- 
mation quite as Flickers himself might have done. 

“Is it a romance, Aunty? Tell me, please. I 
think it would be beautiful to have a romance 
happen up here, and Judy is a darling with those 
thick red gold curls all over her head and her 
funny eyes. Did you notice her eyes? We all 


JUDY, GYPSY PRINCESS 265 


did. They are hazel, I suppose, only they look 
like moss agates, brown and gold and green all 
mixed up nicely. And she is fair-skinned too, 
only for that little sprinkling of freckles over her 
nose. Tell me all about her and Lindsay, do, 
Aunt Milly.” 

Then Aunt Millicent laughed. It was impos- 
sible to resist Polly’s coaxing. 

“Very well, then; only mind, no gossiping. 
Judy is odd in her notions, and she says she 
wouldn’t marry a man with a great deal of money 
for anything. She wants to be free to go away 
in a gypsy wagon if she feels like it. And, 
of course, Stanton Phelps’s daughter-in-law 
couldn’t very well do that.” 

“I don’t see why not,” Polly expostulated. 
“What’s the use of having all the money you 
want if you can’t do just as you like with it? 
I’m sure if Grandfather and I were wealthy like 
Mr. Phelps, we’d have a perfectly dandy time 
cruising everywhere. Maybe we’d go in a canal 
boat if we felt like it, what do you call it? Snub- 
bing, that’s it. Maybe we’d want a gypsy wagon 
too. I know I’d love to have one like Judy’s. 
It’s all padded inside with yellow satin and lit- 
tle mirrors set in, and silk curtains at the win- 


266 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


dows. She bought it from a gypsy princess, she 
said, and it’s just as comfortable and convenient 
as any abode. I like that word, don’t you, Aunt 
Hilly? Abode. It sounds sort of settled and 
contented.” 

“Perhaps, Polly, but I know Lindsay wouldn’t 
like to live in one, not even if he were honey- 
mooning. I wish the boy would give up his 
wild-goose chase and come back home where he 
belongs. I think he’s altruistic.” 

Polly wrinkled her forehead. 

“Means something about being good to others 
before you think of yourself, doesn’t it? I don’t 
believe he’s that at all. He’s selfish because he 
never thinks of all Mr. Phelps has done for him, 
and he simply trots off to the other side of the 
world to hunt up his own people the minute he 
finds out he doesn’t really belong to the dear 
old man.” 

“That wasn’t his idea in going, childie. Lind- 
say is a big brown-eyed boy, full of dreams and 
ambitions quite apart from the question of 
money. He felt it was not right for him to 
remain in a false position any longer. If he 
were not the real son of Mr. Phelps, it was not 
right for him to receive so much from him.” 


JUDY, GYPSY PRINCESS 267 


Polly listened with her lips closed firmly, and 
her own opinion unchanged. All her sympa- 
thies remained with the tall white-haired king, 
sitting alone and blind, while the boy he had 
loved as a son traveled far away, hunting a 
dream. 

“I think as long as he has been given all the 
love and care that a real son would have had, 
he should have given the same in return. Money 
isn’t much after all, and I think the lonesomest 
people in all the world are the ones with money 
and no love, like poor old Mr. Phelps. If he 
had been a foundling in a basket now — ” 

“He was almost,” Aunt Millicent returned 
gently. “Remember how Mr. Phelps explained 
it to you last spring? He was left at the 
Foundlings’ Home in New York by the old Ital- 
ian nurse. Perhaps there wasn’t a basket, but 
all your other romantic details are there for you, 
Polly.” 

“Well, I think if I had been left like that,” 
Polly insisted, “I should rather have remained 
a mystery. Then I could whisper to myself, 
‘Lo, maybe I am a lost princess,’ when probably 
I was only a gypsy kiddie, see?” 

“No, you wouldn’t either. You would long 


268 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


every minute of the day to know who you really 
were. We’re very much attached to our own 
personalities, ladybird.” 

Still Polly held to her own idea in the matter, 
but she took to running down to the pretty pine 
hollow by the mill brook, where Judy had her 
camp. There was another artist girl sharing it 
with her, a tall, fair-haired girl who took lessons 
up at the Castle with the regular summer class 
there, while Judy went up only as the mood 
seized her. 

And gradually Polly drew from her something 
more about Lindsay Phelps. Very gradually, 
for Judy was reticent and a trifle cross when his 
name was mentioned. 

“Polly, never, never fall in love with any son 
of Adam, but learn and labor truly to get thine 
own living and do thy duty in that state of 
life unto which it has pleased God to call 
thee.” 

Judy would often stand, encased in her blue 
linen painting smock, one hand uplifted, hold- 
ing either a paint brush or a cooking spoon, and 
deliver impromptu orations on love and matri- 
mony while Polly listened attentively. 

“Would you like to marry another artist, 


JUDY, GYPSY PRINCESS 269 


Judy? Then you’d both think and work in the 
same line.” 

“Yes, and who’d cook and mend and clean up 
the studio? And probably he’d follow the fear- 
ful new schools, and I love the old.” 

“Uncle Thurlow belongs to the new. He 
paints things that just look like paint smudges 
until you stand away off from them.” 

“Nonsense. He has his own school, Polly. 
Don’t talk art to me. I get it all day long, and 
can’t even make pancakes but what they smell 
of turpentine.” Judy laughed, pushing back 
her red curls from her face. “Is that log cabin 
of yours done yet? Maybe I’ll rent it from you 
if the roof doesn’t leak.” 

“It hasn’t any roof yet, but it will have.” 

Judy nodded her head, and intoned softly and 
sadly: 

“ ‘Oh, I wish my room had a floor, 

I wish my room had a floor, 

I don’t care so much for a window or a door. 

But I wish my room had a floor !’ ” 

“We could stretch a canvas fly over it pro. 
tern.,” Polly said encouragingly. “And it would 
be lots of fun having you near.” 


270 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“I don’t want anything pro. tem.,” Judy said 
firmly. “I’ve been living pro. tem. for several 
years. I was even engaged pro. tem.” 

“To Lindsay?” Polly put it mildly, and Judy 
fell beautifully and unsuspectingly. 

“Yes. Last summer. Oh, Polly, I don’t 
mind telling you after all.” She threw down her 
brush, and came over to the shade where Polly 
sat. “One day we had been for a long tramp 
up past the timber line. Perhaps you know the 
big ravine over west. I had been painting one 
spot there where the brook makes a turn over 
a mass of rocks — ” 

“I know,” Polly interrupted eagerly. “Where 
the seat is. We found it the day we went hunt- 
ing the caves.” 

“It’s a disconcerting place, isn’t it?” Judy 
smiled whimsically, her head on one side, her 
hands planted squarely on her slender hips. 
“You forget there are such things as other peo- 
ple, or money, or anything. And when some- 
body who is wonderfully nice talks to you, you 
are apt to promise what they ask, aren’t you, 
Polly? Then when you have to climb down from 
the green and gold world you find you were only 
making believe you were a princess of leisure. 


JUDY, GYPSY PRINCESS 271 


So you put on your old paint apron again, and 
when the prince comes to call, you sweep him a 
nice low curtsey and say, ‘An it please your 
royal highness. I’ve changed my mind.’ ” 

Polly watched her with wide eyes. “Is that 
the real reason why he went abroad, Judy?” 

“Maybe,” said Judy demurely. “Quien sabe? 
That means who knows? Don’t you like it, 
Polly?” 

“I only hope that he comes back and runs 
away with you.” 

For a moment Judy was silent and the mirth 
died out of her eyes. She stood looking off at 
the great sweeping valley below them and the 
rim of the mountains beyond. 

“Sometimes I almost wish he would myself,” 
she answered. 


CHAPTER XXII 


THE ADMIRAL ARRIVES 

It was the middle of August. Agoonah 
Camp was dozing, so Betty said, in the lazy after- 
noon. After five weeks of woodcraft and camp- 
craft, the girls had settled down into the hap- 
piest, cosiest sort of homeness, as though that 
particular patch out of the forest belonged to 
them alone, and was a start in homesteading. 

Over on the island the log cabin stood com- 
pleted, a standing monument to what the fem- 
inine mind and hand could accomplish, Polly 
declared, when it once set out to do a thing. 
They had persuaded Flickers to haul shingles as 
far as the camp, and now even Judy said it was 
a weatherproof abode. 

Several times the girls had gone over at sun- 
down and stayed over night in their sleeping 
bags, making believe they were in the forest 
primaeval. And it seemed true too, with the 
wood noises all about them, and the low lapping 
of the water on the shore. 


THE ADMIRAL ARRIVES 273 


The canoe had taught them confidence on the 
lake and they cruised all around it one day, and 
held a bacon bat on the farther shore, three miles 
from the camp. The day they entertained Kate’s 
kiddies from the farm, they took them out a few 
at a time and gave them a voyage around to all 
the points of interest: the big fishing ledge, the 
island, the old otter hole, the swimming bay, and 
one fine stretch of white sand they had named 
Crescent Beach. Another place was Council 
Rock where the Indians had lighted huge fires 
back in the old days. One night Uncle Thur- 
low brought up a carload of art students. They 
piled up masses of brushwood and far into the 
night the great flames leaped above the lake 
waters, and the circle around it sang all the heart 
songs they could think of. 

Judy sat next to Polly and once she turned 
and said softly, 

“Lindsay’d like this sort of thing.” 

Polly moved restively and sighed. Why on 
earth didn’t Lindsay appear before this summer 
had gone by, and his gypsy sweetheart had 
moved her little caravan along the highroad out 
of his reach? 

The summer home at Mapledene Farm was to 


274 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


close on the eighteenth, and Polly and Betty went 
down for the final week. It was delightful work. 
Polly enjoyed every minute of the time, and the 
money the girls had earned made it possible for 
them to stay two weeks longer in camp. 

It was Friday morning when Flickers stopped 
at the white picket fence in front of the tall rock 
maples. 

“Pa got word to meet the two forty-five up 
from Albany.” 

“Who’s coming?” Polly called, from where 
she sat under the trees with a wide circle of chil- 
dren around her. 

“Dassent tell,” Flickers answered cheerfully. 
“Got some more news too. Sarepta’s missing.” 

“Just hiding, isn’t she?” Polly rose now, and 
came to the gate. “She wouldn’t go away.” 

“Well, she has gone. She always sits on a 
rock up near the Castle and waits for me to 
drive by with her daily paper. Pa says he 
guesses Sarepta’d give up and die if she didn’t 
get the daily paper to cheer her along. And 
just as soon as she gets it, she scoots like a rab- 
bit into the brush, and that’s the last I see of 
her till next day. Well, she ain’t been on that 
rock all this week.” 


THE ADMIRAL ARRIVES 275 

“She’s sick,” Polly said decidedly. “You tell 
Mrs. Abbott when you go to the camp, and some 
of the girls will go over to the cave and look 
after her, I know they will. Why didn’t you tell 
before, Flickers?” 

“She ain’t sick,” chuckled Flickers, delighted 
at having started something interesting. “She’s 
on her honeymoon. I was going to scare you, 
but you scared too easy. She and Gabe walked 
clear over to Totersville and was married by old 
Judge Bingham, and they’re housekeeping up 
in old Gabe’s log cabin on top of the moun- 
tain.” 

Polly did not laugh. It was too wonderful to 
laugh over. Sarepta with her visions and 
dreams and old Gabriel with his star gazing — 
how had love ever come to this strange pair? 

“I think it’s because they were both lonesome,” 
she told Kate after Flickers had gone jogging 
along the road. “And they both love the moun- 
tains and the wilds. Do you know, Kate, I 
think they’ll be perfectly happy.” 

Kate laughed at her seriousness. “It’s an 
ideal match, Polly, and I’m sure you started it. 
The best part is they’ll believe in each other, and 
no matter how crazy they may seem to the rest 


276 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


of the world, they’ll understand each other’s 
vagaries and dreams. Sarepta will mother Ga- 
briel and believe all he tells her about the Little 
Dipper and the Ursa Major.” 

So engrossed was she in thinking about the 
bridal pair, that Polly forgot Flickers’ other mes- 
sage until after the midday dinner, when most 
of the little people went to sleep. Betty and 
she were shelling lima beans on the shady ver- 
anda when Jimmie drove up ceremoniously in 
the two-horse rig, and the next instant the pan 
of beans went flying to the ground and Polly was 
running down to the Admiral’s embrace. 

“I knew you’d come, you old dear,” she ex- 
claimed rapturously, clinging to his shoulder. 
“Where’s Mr. Phelps? You haven’t come with- 
out him?” 

“Do you think he’s in my suitcase?” smiled 
the Admiral. “He’s coming up in the machine. 
Can’t stand the railroad this weather. Where’s 
the camp?” 

“Polly can go this afternoon. We won’t need 
her,” Kate told him, as she met them at the ver- 
anda steps. “I know you want her with you, 
Admiral.” 

But Polly said no, she would stick to the ship. 


THE ADMIRAL ARRIVES 277 


Jimmie knew the way up to the camp, and could 
drive from there to the Castle where the Ad- 
miral was to be a guest. 

“Doesn’t he look splendid?” she said to Kate 
after he had gone. “Now if my old blind king 
will just come and give you and the Doctor about 
ten thousand dollars — ” 

“Or cents even.” 

“Oh, it will be dollars. Kings do not even 
handle cents. Then I want — ” 

She hesitated. Almost the secret had popped 
out. Not even to Kate would she tell how she 
was building on the hope that Lindsay would 
keep his word, and come up to Montalban. She 
had not told Judy either. Somehow it seemed 
to be between Lindsay and herself. He had 
said he would try to come. Every day now, 
when Flickers brought up the mail, she looked 
for a letter telling of his arrival in America. 

“I suppose you want him to endow a wonder- 
ful new hospital in New York for Doctor to 
run and carry out all his pet notions in?” Kate 
smiled over at her from the desk where she sat. 
“Polly, you’re a schemer, know it?” 

Polly laughed, and went back to the children. 
They hailed her with little squeals of joy and 


278 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


Betty said she washed her hands of all discipline 
while Polly was around. 

“Who wants discipline?” Polly cried, tossing 
one of the Fanchetti brood in her arms. Mrs. 
Fanchetti, Pippino, and Angelo lived in Phil’s 
tent up in the big orchard behind the Castle ; but 
Tori, Maddelina, and tiny Carmela were at the 
farm. It had been such a wonderful summer 
to them all, and as Kate said it was only a starter. 
Every year they would come up and if necessary 
find a larger place so that more children could 
be accommodated. Officially, Mapledene’s sum- 
mer colony for sick babies closed that day, but 
Kate and the Doctor were staying over a few 
days more, and keeping some of the children with 
them. Mrs. Fanchetti came down to help, all 
smiles and ejaculations of pleasure over her 
brood. 

“We’ll see you all up at the camp before we 
leave for good,” Kate said when Betty and Polly 
were ready to leave, “and I can’t thank you girls 
enough for the way you’ve all pitched in and 
helped me.” 

“You’ve helped us too, Kitty Katherine. 
There isn’t a single girl in the whole crowd that 
hasn’t come back from her week here feeling bet- 


THE ADMIRAL ARRIVES 279 


ter and broader. It’s done every one of us a 
world of good.” 

“I love it,” sighed Betty, “and I dread to leave 
all my precious kiddies. You know I can’t make 
up my mind whether I’d better turn into a kin- 
dergarten teacher or have a family of six all my 
own. I’m convinced now my mission is teaching 
young ideas how to shoot and young legs how to 
climb poles and run in a straight line.” 

Laughing and turning often to wave back to 
the figure on the veranda, they went up the road 
together. Nedda ran out from the kitchen to 
call good-bye to them and to hold up the baby, 
while Tori was screeching blissfully, “I wanta 
Pol-lee!” 

“Did Kate tell you the Doctor says Crullers 
may come next summer and take up her work 
with them?” Betty asked, when they were out 
of hearing. “Think of what that means for 
her.” 

“It’s splendid. Dear old Crullers! Perhaps 
she’ll do more good in the world than any of us. 
Ruth’s got to stand by in her home and Kate’s 
the Doctor’s running mate, but I shouldn’t won- 
der if Crullers started off on a new path of her 
own. It has made the biggest kind of differ- 


280 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


ence in her, just her finding out that she was 
good for something.” 

“Polly,” Betty breathed softly under her 
breath, “the bridal pair are approaching. What 
shall we do?” 

Along the stretch of road ahead of them came 
Sarepta and Gabriel, each with a tall staff as 
usual, and after them trotted Nicodemus. They 
were chatting together, and once Sarepta stepped 
into the bushes to gather some flowers that struck 
her fancy. When she caught sight of the girls, 
she smiled and waved her hand to them. 

“We’re going down to the store after some 
things,” she said happily. “Gabe’s going to put 
up shelves and a cupboard for me, and fix the 
roof so it won’t leak. Come up and see us.” 

“There you are,” Polly exclaimed, when they 
had congratulated them and passed along. 
“She’s slept out in all sorts of weather for years, 
and now as soon as she’s married, she makes him 
fix the roof. Aunt Milly will love that. I’m 
relieved, though, to be sure she’ll be taken care 
of. Probably each one thinks they’ll take care 
of the other one.” 

“Listen!” Betty stopped short. “I thought 
I heard a machine.” 


THE ADMIRAL ARRIVES 281 


“It’s the saw-mill/’ Polly returned. “Let’s 
hurry. Tonight we are to have the Council 
Fire and I want Grandfather to come. Hope 
the girls have piled plenty of wood. What are 
you stopping for, Betty?” 

Betty stood still, listening. 

“Well, you can say it’s twin saw-mills if you 
like, but I can hear a machine running over to- 
wards the Castle. Is Judy coming tonight?” 

“She was to come up to camp early and stay 
over night on the island with Peggie and Nat. 
I think she’d just as soon live like this all the 
time. She says she dreads going back to the 
city.” 

“Who doesn’t,” Betty answered gloomily. 

But by the time they had reached the camp 
and had told the news, the gloom had vanished. 
It was hard telling which created the most in- 
terest and excitement, the marriage of Sarepta 
and Gabriel, or the arrival of the Admiral. 

The camp took on a gala appearance. Boughs 
of pine were crossed over the entrance to each 
tent, and a flag floated from the cook tent. 
Even if it did have to be furled at sundown it 
was something to have it there, Crullers said. 
Out on the Council Rock the huge pile of brush 


282 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


satisfied even Polly’s craving for the spectacular. 
After supper was cleared away, they dressed 
in their wood togs, as Polly called them, laying 
aside the working outfits of bloomers and mid- 
dies for the Russian linen dresses. And when 
the first hum of the Castle car could be heard 
off down the road, Polly set a match to the pile 
so that it would flash a greeting to their coming 
guests. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


LED BY THE FIRELIGHT 

Judy sat in solitude on the rocks above the 
circle around the fire. 

“Don’t mind me a bit, Polly,” she said. “I’m 
blue and lonesome and cross as two sticks. Just 
let me fight it out with myself. It’s dear of 
you to be bothered with me at all. I’ll miss you 
awfully.” 

“Me too,” said Polly cheerily. “You look like 
a real gypsy tonight, Judy, with those strings of 
red berries in your hair. You must tell all our 
fortunes by the firelight.” 

So after the arrival of the Admiral and Mr. 
Abbott, they coaxed her down from her pinnacle 
and she sat in the glow of the leaping flames, her 
hair shining like ruddy gold. One by one the 
girls knelt before her, and presented their palms, 
and each was told the future. Once she began, 
Judy fell into the spirit of it, and wove spells 


284 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


of witchery around her fortunes. It seemed al- 
most as if she guessed the secret hope of each 
heart. Peggie was to win fame as a sculptress, 
but never could she be coaxed away from her 
W yoming ranch, not though crowned heads and 
mighty ones of the earth’s high places besought 
her to “do them in clay.” 

Isabel was to travel far and marry a states- 
man. 

“That’s Randy Dinwiddie,” said Betty, but 
Hallie demurred. Randy was her favorite next 
to Marbury Yates, and if anyone was to marry 
Randy, it was Polly. 

Crullers was to attain her heart’s desire, Judy 
told her solemnly, and Crullers smiled loftily. 
The day of her dependence had passed. Now 
she was no longer cup bearer, but an honored 
member of the council fire circle. Her heart’s 
desire would lead to achievement, and already 
she had written home to tell of Doctor Elliott’s 
offer for next year. 

Marjorie’s star pointed to a glorious career 
as a singer. 

“But I pipe up fearfully, Judy,” she pro- 
tested. 

“The pipes of Pan are shrill and sweet,” re- 


LED EY THE FIRELIGHT 285 
plied the gypsy gravely. Betty chanted slowly: 

“ ‘Oh, hark ! oh, hear ! 

How thin and clear. 

The horns of Elfland 
Faintly blowing.’ ” 

Vera would be a child of Nature, anything at 
all from running a farm to hunting with a cam- 
era, and Natalie would travel in distant lands. 
Last came Betty and Polly. Betty knelt laugh- 
ingly and begged for a really good fortune. She 
wanted a great big Virginia home, she said, with 
horses and dogs and something going on all the 
time. 

“You’ll have to marry,” Judy said. “Some 
one tall and dark, and here I see that you will 
rule.” 

“Indeed I will,” Betty agreed. “But then I’ll 
be so wonderful he won’t mind a bit. Your turn, 
Polly.” 

Polly knelt, her two long braids falling on 
each side of her face, Indian fashion. Behind 
her stood the Admiral and Aunt Millicent and 
back in the shadows, leaning against a tree, was 
Mr. Abbott, watching the scene contentedly. 

“I see happiness here,” Judy bent over the 


286 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


tanned and hardened little palm, “happiness 
which comes from your own efforts. You must 
beware of too much fire, too great an effort, too 
fierce a flame. 5 ’ 

“Now what does that mean?” asked Polly. 

“Starting things you can’t finish,” Betty 
prompted. 

“Too much power for your engine,” laughed 
the Admiral. 

And Polly laughed too, flushing, for over- 
enthusiasm was one of her faults. 

“And here is water and you travel far upon it, 
but return faithful to your first dreams.” 

“There you are, Polly, remember?” Betty 
said: 


“ ‘Over the world, and under the world, 

And back at the last to you.’ ” 

“There isn’t any ‘you’ though,” Polly replied, 
smiling. “What’s your own fortune, Judy? 
Let me tell it.” 

Judy tried to beg off, but they all declared 
it was only fair for her to try a dose of her own 
medicine, and she gave Polly her hand. 

“Oh, I see, I see here,” Polly fairly smacked 
her lips over it, “success and fulfilment. Yes, 


LED BY THE FIRELIGHT 287 


it is, too, Judy. That criss-cross on your fate 
line means success, but what is this that zigzags 
down from it into the life line? ,, 

“That’s where I cut myself with the potato 
knife,” Judy answered in a laughing tone. “Go 
on, oh, seeress.” 

“Comes into thy destiny one who shall — ” 

“Pardon, everybody,” came Takeshi’s mild 
voice behind them in the darkness. “We have 
been to the camp and called and there has not 
come any answer, so we are here, led by the fire- 
light.” 

“Led by the firelight,” Polly remembered those 
words long afterwards as they all rose and faced 
the unexpected guests. For there were two, old 
Stanton Phelps and beside him one whom Polly 
recognized at once. It was the original of her 
Florentine boy’s picture. She did not need 
Judy’s little cry to tell her this was Lindsay. 

Straight and tall he stood beside his father, 
and he looked only at Judy in her green gown, 
with the red berries in her hair. Polly had 
slipped her hand in Mr. Phelps’s, while the Ad- 
miral and Uncle Thurlow welcomed him. She 
felt like chuckling the way Crullers always did 
when things came true. She did not need the 


288 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUE 


reassuring clasp from Mr. Phelps’s hand to make 
her understand that everything was right now 
between them, this brown-eyed boy of his and 
himself. 

Then Aunt Millicent insisted on their going 
back to the camp, as it was chilly and damp by 
the lake now in the late August nights. It 
seemed like going through some enchanted forest 
with the orange colored moon rising in the sky 
back of old Baldy Knob, and the night birds 
calling drowsily in the undergrowth. 

Peggie was just ahead of Lindsay and he 
leaned forward to say, “I know you’re Polly.” 

‘‘No, indeed, I’m not,” Peggie exclaimed 
shyly. “Polly is away behind with Mr. Phelps.” 

So back he went, climbing over the fallen 
trunks of trees that lay across the beach, their 
tops half in the water, until he found Polly care- 
fully guiding her king. 

“ I’m glad you’ve come,” she said happify. 
“I’ve always thought you would, but it’s mighty 
nice to have it come true. And you look just 
like your picture, too.” 

“We’re going to keep bachelor hall at the 
Castle for another week,” Mr. Phelps told her. 
“Your Uncle Thurlow and the Admiral and my- 


LED BY THE FIRELIGHT 289 


self. The student crowd have gone, I believe, 
and Takeshi will have only us to bother with. 
By the way, your Aunt Evelyn told me to be 
sure to remind you not to get freckled.” 

“We’re all freckled and tanned beautifully,” 
Polly answered, laughing. “There hasn’t been 
a single accident and we haven’t set fire to the 
woods or done anything that Aunt Evelyn was 
afraid we might. It’s been a dandy summer. I 
wish I could come back next year in a gypsy 
wagon like Judy does.” 

“So do I,” said Lindsay, and only Polly 
caught his meaning. Judy was ahead with the 
other girls. Only once, as she climbed into the 
canoe with Peggie and Nat to go across to the 
island cabin, did she speak to him. 

“Good night, Lindsay.” 

“Good night,” he called back. “I’m coming 
over in the morning.” 

“Polly, you old matchmaker,” Aunt Millicent 
said when the visitors had gone and they were in 
their tent. “See what you have started. And 
Mr. Phelps has always liked Judy. Don’t you 
remember the first time you went to see him she 
stood talking to him — ” 

“I know, with peach blossoms in her hands,” 


290 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


cried Polly. c Tve always wondered why Judy 
looked familiar to me.” 

“Just as if you had met the Obelisk again,” 
teased Aunt Millicent. “I always thought that 
Lindsay cared for her, but his going away like 
that for two years — ” 

“Maybe she sent him away,” said Polly. 
“Girls are so queer. Aunty. I know Judy likes 
him. She told me so.” 

“Really? Well, I only hope she’ll tell Lind- 
say so,” with a sigh. “Go to sleep now, childie, 
if you can with that big round moon staring at 
you.” 

It was hard to, but finally she dropped off into 
dreamland and thought that Judy was the maiden 
who danced in the firelight at the Druid rites 
when the world was young and the old blind 
king reigned. 

It was early the following morning when 
Agoonah Camp had its first caller. He came up 
the old timber rbad whistling, and Betty stopped 
paring potatoes to listen. 

“Whence comest this jarring note?” she called. 
“That is not Flickers.” 

“It’s only Lindsay,” Aunt Millicent replied. 
“Had your breakfast yet, son?” 


LED BY THE FIRELIGHT 291 


“Long ago. Jove, but it seems good to be 
back home, Mrs. Abbott.” He stretched his 
arms widely as if he could have taken in the 
mountains in one embrace. “Dad and the Ad- 
miral are going fishing. Can I stay with you 
folks?” 

Could he? They welcomed him eagerly and 
each one found something for him to do. The 
oil stove needed fixing and the canoe had been 
acting rather queerly. The big tent had blown 
down in a thunderstorm, and needed a firm hand 
of control. Finally Polly asked him if he knew 
how to keep rain out of a log cabin. 

“Fill up the chinks.” 

“But what can we fill them with? You’d bet- 
ter come over to the island and see for yourself 
what I mean,” she insisted. “I’ll row you 
across.” 

Not a word did she tell him of whom he might 
find over there. Judy had decided to stay over 
and sketch until noon, and Polly had accordingly 
rowed her over after breakfast and then come 
back. So now, as soon as Lindsay stepped on 
shore, Polly pushed away from the bank. 

“Aren’t you coming too?” he called to her. 

“Please don’t ask questions,” she coaxed. 


292 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“Judy’s there somewhere, and you must find her. 
I’ll sit out here in the canoe and chaperon you 
if you like, but go find her.” 

So for nearly half an hour she stayed there 
among the lily pads, waiting while he obeyed 
her. At last they came in sight, and Judy’s 
lashes were wet where she had been crying, but 
Polly did not mind. There were little round 
damp spots too on Lindsay’s nice clean white 
linen coat. 

“Polly,” he said, when she joined them, “I’m 
going to call you that if you don’t mind. Polly, 
we’re going to be married and live on this island 
excepting when we go on a jaunting trip in 
Judy’s wagon.” 


CHAPTER XXIV 


LEAVING THE GYPSY TRAIL 

Of all weddings, Judy’s was the quaintest, the 
girls thought. 

“You see, Polly,” she said, “I haven’t anyone 
at all to care for me, and when I put the wagon 
away for the winter, I go back to the studio on 
Washington Square, and live with some of the 
girls. So Lindsay wants me to marry him right 
away.” 

“She objects to ceremonial affairs,” interposed 
Lindsay, “and I don’t see why we can’t be mar- 
ried at the Castle or in the Hollow, or any- 
where she fancies.” 

“At the Castle,” Polly said. “In the inner 
garden where the fountain is, and we’ll all be 
bridesmaids.” 

But long before the wedding day came, she 
sat there in the inner garden beside Mr. Phelps, 
and heard the story of the journey to Ravenna 
from Lindsay’s own lips. 


294 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


“I had those two names to go by, Bavenna and 
Costanza Neri,” he said. “So I made straight 
for Ravenna, and hunted up the Casa Neri. 
It’s a little house on the slope above the town, 
and when I found it, Donna Costanza was not 
there. She is old and goes farther down on the 
Campagna to stay with her married daughter 
in the winter. I stayed there though, only go- 
ing to Florence to study a few weeks. And 
when I was sure she was at home, I went 
there.” 

“Did she know you?” asked Polly breathlessly. 

“No, but she remembered who I was after I 
had told her what I myself knew. And then,” 
his voice grew tender and low, “then she took me 
to my mother’s tomb. She died when I was a 
baby, and my father brought me here with old 
Costanza to care for me. It was after his death 
that she placed me in the Foundlings’ Home.” 

“And what is your really truly name?” 

He smiled at Polly’s eagerness. 

“She could not remember the first, only that 
I was called Laddie. I found the record in the 
little church there, ‘Wilfred Gordon.’ It’s 
mighty queer seeing your own name for the first 
time.” 


LEAVING THE GYPSY TRAIL 295 


“And the whole thing is clear now, and you’re 
satisfied?” asked Polly. 

“All clear, thanks to your management,” he 
answered, smiling down at her as she sat beside 
his father. “I’d never have ventured back if it 
had not been for your encouragement, telling me 
about Dad and how beautiful Montalban was.” 

Kate and her Doctor had gone back to the 
city long since, but two days after the wedding 
Polly had a letter from her telling the good luck 
that had befallen the kiddie summer camp 
project. In memory of the waif he had loved 
and fathered, old Stanton Phelps gave fifty thou- 
sand dollars as an endowment fund for the found- 
ing of a real summer home at Montalban. 

Polly sat with the letter in her hands, and 
slowly the tears came to her eyes. 

“The old darling,” she said softly, “the splen- 
did old king who sits in the sun.” 

“Well,” Betty exclaimed when the news had 
spread around the camp, “Agoonah isn’t such a 
loon of a place after all, girls. I think it has 
started something that will go on and on. Polly, 
it’s all your doings.” 

“Mine?” Polly echoed. “When I’m only the 
signpost that points the way. It’s been all our 


296 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


doings. Can’t you see the Doctor fairly beam? 
Why, he can buy even the Castle now and have 
it for his precious waifs and sick kiddies.” 

“No, ma’am, he won’t do any such thing,” 
Aunt Millicent interposed. 

“Is Uncle Thurlow going to have it. Aunt 
Milly?” 

“No, but our summer occupancy expires this 
fall, and Lindsay wants to bring his gypsy bride 
back there to live instead of in New York. I 
suppose part of the winter they will spend with 
Mr. Phelps in town, but most of the year will be 
passed here in the mountains they both love.” 

“And what will you and Uncle Thurlow do?” 

Aunt Millicent’s brown eyes were full of mis- 
chief. 

“Is it possible that one secret has been safe 
from you, Polly kins? We’re going to build a 
big summer lodge right here on the shore of 
Lake Agoonah, and if you like you may come 
up and live on your island, you or any of the 
dear girls who have made this summer such a 
joyful remembrance for me.” 

“But we’ll all be scattered after this year,” 
Natalie exclaimed, sitting cross-legged on the 
ground before the camp chaperon. “I’m to go 


LEAVING THE GYPSY TRAIL 297 

with father out to California and Peggie will be 
in Wyoming, and Polly rounding the capes with 
the Admiral. I shall always think of her as 
finding all the little coral isles in the seven 
seas — ” 

“How could there be any coral isles in the 
Arctic, goose,” demanded Betty practically. 

“Never mind, Nat. I will hunt up the coral 
isles and send you chunks of them.” 

Nat rolled with joy. It was so like Polly to 
promise “chunks” before she even had a glimpse 
of the ship she might sail in. 

“I don’t care,” Polly returned happily. 
“Half of the joy of life comes from a capacity 
to enjoy everything, yesterday, today, and to- 
morrow, and if you keep expecting a thing to 
happen, it usually does. Maybe I won’t be sail- 
ing to coral isles at all. Maybe next summer 
I’ll tuck Ruth under my arm and march right 
back up here. I’m never disappointed when any- 
thing doesn’t come true. There are always half 
a dozen other hopes to take its place.” 

But all the same, the last few days at the camp 
were rather melancholy ones. It had been such 
a glorious summer. Every wood trail and tim- 
ber road now had its memory for them. They 


298 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


had penetrated to every inlet along the lake 
shore. They knew the forest lore, the signs of 
animals, and haunts of birds, and all the strange 
calls and sounds, almost as Sarepta did. It had 
planted deep in each girl’s heart a love for the 
open, for the splendid silences of Nature, and 
for her majesty when she is found in state among 
the mountains. 

Camp was broken the last day in August. 
Flickers and Jimmie came up to help load the 
boxes and tents on the wagons, and the girls 
were to make the trip back in the two machines, 
Mr. Phelps’s big touring car and Uncle Tliur- 
low’s husky little roadster, as Betty dubbed it. 
They brought back memories of the motor trip 
of the previous year. When they had all climbed 
in, they looked back at the camp site. The stone 
fireplace seemed a mute reminder of all the feasts 
it had helped to prepare. The yellow trampled 
squares of grass where the tents had stood, the 
two tall trees where the hammock had swung, 
and the long timber table still standing beneath 
the pine shade, made the girls feel sad. 

“Good-bye, Agoonah!” Betty and Polly called 
from the machine they were in, and all the girls 
took up the cry. For the moment, they felt a 


LEAVING THE GYPSY TRAIL 299 


thrill of the old Indian superstition, as if the 
spirit of the beautiful mountain lake might rise 
from its sparkling waters and call back to them 
in loving greeting. 

“Polly, you’re crying!” Aunt Millicent said. 

“No, I’m not,” Polly smiled up at her, though 
her big brown eyes were full of tears. “Only I 
always hate farewells and finishes, and this is 
only the beginning of them. We’ve got to drop 
Peggie and Nat at Albany to take the west- 
bound trains, and Betty and Nipper’ll be leaving 
me at Washington, and Marjorie at Baltimore. 
Only Crullers and Hallie and I will go to 
Queen’s Landing.” 

“I won’t, Polly,” Crullers said wistfully. 
“I’ve got to go home.” 

“Poor old Crullers!” began Hallie, but Crul- 
lers stopped her. 

“I’m not,” she exclaimed valiantly. “I’m good 
old Crullers, grand old Crullers. Don’t you 
dare call me poor old Crullers any more. I’m 
coming back to Montalban next summer to be 
Kate’s right-hand helper.” 

“Oh, do look,” Polly said quickly. They had 
turned off the mountain road into the state road 
that led to the village, and sitting there on her 


300 POLLY PAGE CAMPING CLUB 


favorite rock was Sarepta, but no longer clad 
in the dingy one-piece dress. Her hair was 
combed up and pinned on top of her head, 
although little curls escaped and fell softly 
around her happy old face. She wore a black 
and white checked dress with a lace collar, and 
on her left hand there sparkled her new gold 
wedding ring. As the two machines stopped, 
she shook hands with each of the girls. 

“I told Gabriel I just had to come down and 
take a last look at all of ye,” she explained. “I 
dreamt last night you was a-riding through 
meadows of lilies and asphodel, so I guess you 
won’t have any accidents. And Gabriel went 
out just as the morning star was rising over 
Baldy Knob and he says all the signs are good 
for ye. He put it different and real poetical. 
He said: ‘The stars in their courses are a- work- 
ing for Caesar.’ Thought I’d come down and 
tell ye.” 

“It’s awfully dear and kind of you, Sarepta,” 
Polly said. “We’ll never, never forget how 
kind you’ve been to all of us, and you never 
minded us running all over your mountains a 
bit.” 

“Good-bye, Sarepta, good-bye,” they all called 


LEAVING THE GYPSY TRAIL 301 


back to the tall, spare figure on the big gray 
rock, while Flickers, who had backed his two- 
horse team to the side of the road to let the ma- 
chines go by, lifted his whip in final salute. 

“ ’Bye, everybody,” he shouted. “Here’s 
wishing you luck. Pa sent best regards, and 
said for me to tell you he’d have a full account 
in the Farm Journal Saturday.” 

“Oh, aren’t they all nice to us,” Polly ex- 
claimed, as she sat back on the leather cushions, 
laughing but crying too. “I wish Judy and 
Lindsay were here, but we’ll see them in New 
York. She’s the happy princess now, girls, re- 
member?” 

And Betty, poet laureate of Camp Agoonah, 
lifted her voice in the lines Polly always loved: 

“ ‘Across the hills and far away, 

Beyond their utmost purple rim. 

And deep into the dying day, 

The happy princess followed him/ ” 


THE END 




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